Taming The Beast . . .

We have two Windows desktop systems here -- Jameece's "Beauty" 3.3 HGz i5/ 4 GB DDR3 / 1TB HDD / Windows 7 screamer . . . and "the Beast" (2.8 GHz P4 / 2GB DDR2 / 350 GB PATA HDD / XP SP3), some of the components of which are older than my goddaughter.

We got Beauty with a tax refund check because The Beast was behaving, well, beastly. World of Warcraft was undergoing random abnormal terminations, locking up the system and causing video to go completely away every few minutes. Installing the final patches of WoW patch 3.3 was a hell of "download incremental patch . . . attempt install . . . fail install . . . troubleshoot . . . repeat."

When my trusty MacBook migrated to "format and reinstall" land (Apple - gear, double flash startup), I grabbed Beast for my various WoW playing stuff. I need to wait a week or two to buy a Snow Leopard CD (my old one did not make the trip to Fresno last year).

Until them, I had to make the Beast work for games.

Round 1 of troubleshooting: memcheck found some bad RAM, which we replaced.

While we were at it, we also upgraded the video card (because Jameece also got a new Viewsonic monitor that seems to work best with ATI hardware . . . we had an nVidia in there) and reinstalled Windows XP.

The memory errors went away, but WoW and The Sims 3 were still randomly crashing. Ran Windows Update and applied all updates. Still crashing. I ran dxdiag. It showed DirectX 9.0c was up to date and completely functional. I installed the latest and greatest video card drivers (Radeon HD 3460), applicable hotfixes, etc. I updated the motherboard AGP bus (I know, sad , . . .) drivers, tweaked the AGP aperture in BIOS . . . nada, Ran temp monitor software on the GPU -- even with ambient cooling this card's GPU temperature does not exceed 75 degrees C. Card is not overclocked. No spikes or error messages are logged -- ever.

Then I ran an OpenGL stress test on the GPU -- No issues.

It took me just five minutes to find out how to force WoW to use the OpenGL renderer.

No more issues. I played WoW for several hours on the Beast with no issues at all.

Security Alert: WebGL, Firefox and Chrome

I usually DO NOT send out dire technical warnings about computer stuff I find out on the Internet.

However, when a warning is credible, I see it as critical to inform as many of you as possible about these things.

I subscribe to a number of cybersecurity mailing lists, including the US Department of Homeland Security's US-CERT technical lists as well as follow many credible sites. Warnings that come from panicked users in emails are often not credible.

This warning applies to users who run the Firefox 4.x, Google Chrome and Apple Safari web browsers. Users of Internet Exploder, er, Explorer, are not affected by this one as far as I know (probably because DirectX is the Microsoft-based technology for doing this).

The warning concerns a new service that these browsers support called "WebGL." It's an adaptation of the OpenGL graphics language used in 3D applications like video games to web applications. WebGL is the kind of thing one might use to implement, say, a game like World of Warcraft in a web browser.

Neat idea . . . but there is a big security hole in the latest version that could cause your system to lock up or worse.

So, what to do?

If you are using Firefox 4, all you need to do is click here and follow the directions.

If you use Safari (and apparently, Chrome), this option is disabled by default. Just leave it alone . . .

And, update your browsers when updates become available.

"Begin Again, the Browsers Wars Have . . ."

As a veteran tech-head, I remember well the first browser war between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape Navigator was the feature-rich, lightweight, intuitive champ, IE was clunky, slow and had the user interface from hell . . . but in the end, the vastly-improved IE 5 / 6, integration with the Windows operating system and feature bloat eventually killed Netscape.

As a Mac user, I've had the choice between the bundled Apple Safari browser and Mozilla Firefox. While Safari is fast due to tight integration with Mac OS X, boasts the clean clear interface of any Mac program, most of its deeper settings are not readily available to the user -- and far too many web sites just do not work with Safari. Firefox launches very slowly, renders slowly but nicely, has just about the right amount of settings exposure and is a lot more compatible with respect to web pages it will render.

To continue the Star Wars meme . . . "there is another . . ."

And, at first glance, this "other" is pretty damned good.

A couple of years ago, while I was still earning my daily bread by troubleshooting Macs, I downloaded an early beta of Google's "Chrome" web browser. At the time I was singularly unimpressed with it. Chrome was buggier than a roach motel then, so I soldiered on with Safari for work and Firefox for everything else. In my post-Apple life I can count on the extended fingers of a clenched fist how many times I've launched Safari.

After one Firefox crash too many, I downloaded the latest version of Chrome for Mac. The bugs that so annoyed me before were no more. I am very impressed with the rendering speed on even new web pages. I like the tight integration with my favorite general-purpose search engine and I love the low memory footprint I'm seeing in Activity Monitor. Chrome imported my Firefox bookmarks without any fuss or bother.

As a quick "smoke test", I logged several web pages that I use frequently that give me issues with Firefox. I tried a few Facebook games of the variety that sometimes blow up Firefox. The games performed without issues. The World of Warcraft Armory page -- another page that makes heavy use of Flash -- also rendered flawlessly.

My verdict? Firefoxes are cute, but Chrome shines.

Daily Bloggery and Linky-linky: 2009-03-11

1. SotR: I'm kind of tired due to sleep dep. Kind of like that pushcart in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the guy yelling "Bring Out Your Dead!" However, the lack of sleep has been in a very good cause. OMG what a cause . . . I'm not going to /disclose more just yet, except for the fact that I'm in a very good place. SGLs continue to be Green. YAY ME.

2. Baycon has gone from "definite maybe" to "I'm going. Period." Yes, this is related to item 1.

3. Effective immediately: Chuck Norris is no joke. I'm gonna utterly PWN the next WoW loudmouth who starts with the CN jokes.

4. Tech Republic needs to STFU with the FUD.

5. New talking iPod. Nice.

Single Computer User ISO "a clue"

Start here.

Software Review: MoneyWell

Last post I mentioned this very nice piece of software I found for managing personal finances on a Mac. Macs are starting to challenge the stereotype that PCs are only for number-crunching and gamers while Macs are only for artsy-fartsy creatives like musicians, photographers, graphic artists and the like. Apple's Numbers spreadsheet, part of iWork'08, is a great start in that direction and FileMaker's Bento database app puts Access to shame for the personal user. Sadly, there have been no decent personal finance apps. Microsoft Money -- my daughter's favorite piece of personal finance software which is among the most user friendly of Microsoft apps -- is Windows only. Since for a variety of reasons I'm not going to Boot Camp my system anytime soon or resort to a virtualization solution like Parallels or VMWare Fusion, and I detest Sicken, er, Quicken -- the other most common Mac app for financial management (I'm just not Intuit . . .) because it is crippleware next to the Winblows version. As for web-based apps, please spare me. Ick on a fscking stick.

One day while checking out VirginTracker, er, Versiontracker one day on break, I found MoneyWell. Impressive piece of software. The idea behind MoneyWell is this: If iTunes and a financial app got stinking drunk one night at the office Yule party and did the nasty in a broom closet, MoneyWell could be the result born 9 months later. Your Chart of Accounts becomes a group of playlists, your bank account is like an iTunes library, etc. Budgeting is a matter of allocating money to "buckets," add in income and the proggy fills the buckets with money. Add in the graphing and analysis tools, and you have a killer financial app. In a sense, this tool turns budgeting into a RPG point allocation system, something I have a easy time understanding. As someone who designed a custom small business financial accounting system about three jobs ago with spreadsheets and QBASIC macros (don't try this at home....) for MS-DOS 5.x / Netware 2.2.x, I know how beastly these things can get. MoneyWell's learning curve is not steep, and the built in help is as good as anything I've seen in Leopard; the online tutorials are excellent, as good as those for iPods.

Unlike many such apps form VirginTracker, this one's polished and professional. No Thirst Software did a wonderful job. It reminded me a lot of Bento, another great Leopard app I make a lot of use of in my gaming. At $39.99 USD for a license -- the shareware version is limited to 200 transactions -- it beats the hell out of Quicken.

Color me impressed by this app. If you have a Mac and you have budgeting issues, get this proggy. Try it, you'll buy it.

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Listening to: The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money
via FoxyTunes

RIP Netscape

Burying the corpse of the slain from the Browser Wars

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Listening to: Stan Rogers - Field Behind the Plow
via FoxyTunes

Praise Teh Sacred Google!

This. Is. C00l.

The Discordian in me loves this kind of stuff. Eris and Google -- BFF!

Google's High Holy Day is September 14, the anniversary of the date the domain google.com was registered. And, it's just five days before another geek holiday, Talk Like A Pirate Day. A holiday devoted to the discovery of truth and good, not to mention pirates, is a perfect antidote to the annual beating around the head and shoulders with the proverbial bloody shirt every Sept 11.

Of course the Dungeon Master in me beat them to it awhile ago.


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Listening to: Seanan McGuire - Still Catch The Tide
via FoxyTunes

Stoopid StarCraft Install Tricks v 1.0

OK, so there I was, at work, installing the copy of StarCraft I got as a prize on my MacBook via Firewire target disk mode (due to the bad optical in this MB) when the evil nasty badness began. My MB was on battery and in the middle of the install it shut down, out of power.

One of the "thall shalt nots" of FireWire Target Disk Mode is "do not forcibly dismount the target volume during data transfer or you will hose the target disk."

Oops.

I restarted my MB, hoped for the best and got the worst. Dreaded apple /gear startup. Disk Utility confirmed that the volume was as hosed as Chicago in 1871.

So, I reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled Leopard from a FWTDM'd workstation and went home.

Once home, I started first time setup and restored from my Time Machine external backup volume.
EVERYTHING is BACK -- all my gaming notes, my bookmarks, email, iLife suite, music, pictures of Her Cuteness, and oh yes World of Warcraft. Only a couple of hours lost in restoring. Had I had a working optical I could have restored while booted from it.

Mac users: if your machine can run Leopard, and you have not installed it yet, your data is at risk...If you've installed Leopard and not gotten an external hard drive for Time Machine, your data is at risk . . .if your machine cannot run Leopard, get one that does. You know you want to, and it is the right thing to do.

If you're not using a Mac, well you need to.

Update 1: Ran software update and it hosed my HD AGAIN! Fortunately, archive and install fixes this crap.

WiFi power bost?

This wireless router is said to have a 1/4 mile range. This reminds me of the science fiction RPG that featured fusion hand grenades on its equipment list -- they could destroy a city block, bit you could only throw it twenty meters or so . . .



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Listening to: Weird Al Yankovic - Christmas At Ground Zero
via FoxyTunes

What Am I Thankful For?

A very partial list . . .

Physical: A great job, a roof over my head, enough cash to pay the bills, bandwidth and the means to use it.
Social: Mom, Dad, Ron, Sophia and Sam. Friends like Michelle, David, Kayla, Matt, Richard, Sammy, Duncan, Isabel, Tim, Kate, Sue, Rachael, Don, Rob, Kajir, Heather, Dave, Diane, Gene, Aries, Nika, Mystique, Harley, Rita, Bug, Shalyn and Hillary.
Other: An awesome health care team led by Dr. Nelson . . . the fact that the evil that is Shrub will be out of office in about a year . . . RT and e-Tran . . . PCJ and Panera . . .the music that helped save my life this year: Seanan McGuire, The Elders, Emerald Rose, Leslie Fish, James Blunt, Tempest, Escape Key, Flogging Molly, Roy Zimmerman, Loreena Mckinnett, Niel Young and Weird Al Yankovic.
Media: Serenity / Firefly, D&D, World of Warcraft.

IT WORKS!!

The new external hard drive (the black thing on the right hand side of the picture) worked as expected right out of the box. Well, except for the fact it was formatted as the Windows-default NTFS. That was a bit unexpected, but that's why Mac OS X has Disk Utility. I set up three partitions, one for Time Machine (HD Welles), a smallish one as a bootable Leopard partition (DaVinci), and one as FAT32 for D&M (Dandelion).

Once Leo detected HD Welles, Time Machine went right to work. 50+ gigs backed up without any intervention on my part. An hour later, another backup . . . etc.

To see how restore worked, I deleted a folder full of old WoW mods from my desktop and emptied the trash. Invoked Time Machine, and looked at my last backup. There it was . . . Two clicks later, and it was back on my desktop.

Just for fun, I forced a TM backup manually rather than waiting for the hourly automated backup. The only sign I saw on my screen of the backup in process was a small circle icon next to the external hard drive. Groovy!

Now to install Leo on the DaVinci partition. I'm also going to use the partition as dump storage and to test how other applications interact with a external hard disk. I'll be doing that at my workstation because there I have an optical drive that works.

The very best thing about Leo . . .

Two words: TIME MACHINE.
Time Machine is the very best single reason for a Mac user to buy and install Leopard . . . and of you are a Windows user, the very best reason to go get a new Mac. Time Machine is a backup and restore utility. In a word, you can, at need, "go back in time" and restore your entire system or even a single file from any 1-hr increment in the last day, any day in the last month and any month thereafter. So, if in the middle of writing your master's thesis your MacBook Pro's internal HD packs it in, if you have TM and an external hard disk, you can restore the last backup (not to mention OS X, all your preferewnces, email, etc) of your thesis once the hard disk is replaced, and on you go.

You can restore a single file, your whole iTunes Library or thw whole fscking startup partition. No more need to use Target Disk Mode and another Mac. No more "log in as root, drag and drop your Home folder (c:\Documents and settings\yourname for you windows users) and HOPE you got it right." For some users, enabling the OS X "root" account is like handing a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome a greased grenade . . . only "sudo rm -R /* is capable of more damage in less time (think dropping to DOS, cd c:, then del *.*). No more Retrospect, .Mac backup 3.x (not a bad program, but it's about as intuitive as brain surgery when compared to TM) or needing to rely on a non-Apple solution.

Best of all, TM does this silently and automaticly..

Windows, by comparison, has "system restore" which is great for restoring Windows system files . . . but it does nto do jack about your master's thesis or your email, pics, music, videos or porn.

I had been looking forward to buying a new external hard drive to try this feature out once my finances allowed for it. Fortunately for me, I won a nice 250 gigabyte USB 2.0 drive today for quarterly sales performance. This is plenty of space to allow me to back up the 100 GB drive in my MacBook (currently about 40 gigs free). I'm going to put at least three partitions on the disk: one OS X for TM (I'm going to names it "HD Welles"), one also OS X (one just big enough to serve as a 10.5 startup disk, probably named "DaVinci" -- as in Leo-nardo) to install Leopard so I can boot off this drive at need and one formatted for FAT32 (Disk Utility does not speak Windows NTFS) so my good friends Michelle and David can back up their docs/music/pics/etc/omg/wtf/bbq.

Since the disk will be partitioned three ways, I think I'll call it "Gaul." Of course, people will look at me funny (not that they don't do that already . . .).

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Listening to: Styx - Suite Madame Blue
via FoxyTunes

Apps! (cough) Apps!

I got up early this morning thanks to a lovely coughing fit. Feeling better than yesterday, though.

I spent a bit of that early morning time playing some more with Bento, the FileMaker database app I mentioned yesterday. I forgot to mention that it accesses the Mac OS X Address Book and iCal too. This makes event planning sense.

I foresee a Macworld release for Bento (mid-January).

Tuesday also saw a major, tasty update (version 2.3) to World of Warcraft. The biggest change is under the hood: optimization for the common dual-processor machines like the Intel Core / Core 2 Duo-driven machines like almost all of the Intel Macs. Prior to yesterday's update, WoW would typically run almost exclusively in CPU#1 (I saw this in the Activity Monitor utility) and load it down to 80%+. After update, the load is much more balanced between the CPUs. They also tweaked the graphics animations (probably in response to Leopard's introduction of the Core Animation API).

The big fix from the gameplay point-of-view is that the leveling curve has been flattened between levels 30 and 60 by giving about 15% more XP per quest completed or monster slain and reducing the XP needed to level by about 15%. Prior to 2.3, leveling slowed waaaay down between levels 30 and 60. In addition, it became very difficult to "solo" a lot of the non-dungeon quests, and as a player hit level 40, far too many of the quests available in places like Arathi Highlands, Dustwallow Swamp and Stranglethorn Vale for leveling the character were simply not soloable. I'd usually bypass these quests and either go "grind" some easier monsters or hope to put together a pick up group (PuG) and hit a dungeon. Apparently this slowdown was frustrating so many new players that many were quitting. PuGs for dungeons can get really ugly.

I noticed the difference right away on my Level 55 Troll Shaman alt. It typically takes me 12 hrs or so of play to advance one level at 50+; I went from 54 + 50% to 55 in less than 4 hours. Me likes.

Oh and 10.4.11 and 10.5.1 updates come out today.



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Now playing: The Elders - Message from the Battle Zone
via FoxyTunes

Something very nice this way comes or Bend it Like Bento

After coughing my lungs up all night, I feel semi human this evening.

Oh, the things you can learn from a RSS feed . . . I subscribe to the MacFixIt.com feed for Version Tracker. VT is a site that lists new software releases for Mac OS X, Mac OS Classic, Windows and Palm OS. New software releases including things like virus signature files for antivirus suites, security updates for core operating systems, and updates for applications major and minor. If you want to make a Mac so something that Apple has not provided a program for, say, ripping DVDs to your hard drive, look at Version Tracker. Want new iTunes visualizations or updates to World of Warcraft? VT's got 'em.

Something very interesting came in on the OS X feed tonight: FileMaker, a Mac software company so venerable that Apple bought it some years ago, has a public beta / trial version of Bento, their new personal database software application.

Database software is usually one of the most user-unfriendly of the common applications. On the one hand you have general purporse database apps like FileMaker Pro. dBase, Microsoft Access (an oxymoron if there ever was one!), etc that are very flexible tools for designing exactly the database you want to build. Very nice until you need to retrieve something from it. Then you need to learn a query language -- basically a specialized scripting computer language -- in order to search that database. On the other hand you have special-purpose applications like WotC's D&D eTools that are very easy to use -- no programming and no data structures knowledge needed -- but are one trick ponies, inflexible, unusable for anything else.

This gap has long been recognized by software developers. OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Claris Works, Microsoft Works (another oxymoron) and other suites have database programs that attempt to address the issue; all of these apps require a degree of familiarity with database software conventions and programming that is beyond most users, and is not worth the trouble for even someone like me to learn to use.

Bento hits the nail on the head. It is a very flexible database editing and search application aimed at folks who do not want or need to learn SQL. Three things about this app: Start with the source list / app work area of iTunes and the iLife and iWork applications; add to that drag and drop database design and tie that to Leopard's Spotlight metadata search functions and you have Bento in a nutshell. If you can make an iTunes playlist, you can make a functional and usable database.

My test of this nice little tool is the creation of NPC databases for D&D and Serenity.

Yet more Fun with Leo

Lesser-known but fscking impressive things about Leopard

1. Empty the trash "securely" also empties "in use" files that are often a pain to get rid of. Windows Media Player for Mac (R.I.P.) used to be the biggest PITA in this category.

2. Bluetooth file exchange looks looks like a ftp client on steroids. NICE.

3. RSS feeds. Safari in Tiger handled them well, Now Mac Mail can get your RSS feeds. I subscribe to numerous tech, political and culture feeds, so I read them in Mail instead of a dedicated RSS app or browser. Safari is a decent browser, I use it all the time for work because it is the only browser supported on the webapps I use there. These apps simply do not work with Firefox. Now I have a non work reason to use Safari: to bookmark RSS feeds for Mail.

4. TextEdit can read .odt files. "ODT" is "open document format," a standards-based alternative to Microsoft's "xdoc." Xdoc is a next-generation XML document file format that Microsoft debuted in the latest version of Office. ODT files are the native output format for OpenOffice or NeoOffice. Neo is the "Cocoa" native port of the X.11- driven Mac and Unix versions of OpenOffice. This beats the hell out of "install X.11 and the broken as hell version of OpenOffice and hope that Rosetta (the Mac OS X runtime PPC to Intel software emulator used on all Intel Macs) does not hose you.

5. A default guest account. This account self-destructs once logged out of. This means all downloads, bookmarks, caches all go bye bye at logout unless saved on something like a thumb drive. Now I can let others use my Macs assured that if they download something, it will go away when they log out.

From Teh Innerweb for your Bush-Bashing Pleasure!

I like this





I was looking for a website with a countdown clock where I could use the new WebClip feature of OS X Leopard Safari 3.0 to make a Dashboard widget showing a countdown of the time till Shrub is scheduled to leave office. The widget even has a reset feature to reset the countdown in case the SOB is impeached. They also have Winderz screen savers (the Mac version is for pre-Tiger versions of the OS) and other assorted widgetoid things.

More Leopard FUN

The only reason I did not install Leopard on my personal machine on the first day it was released was that my personal machine has an optical drive that keeps on ejecting discs. Again. But tonight I got the cat to purr as it should.

OK, so how did I manage to get Leo installed? Four very important words to the Mac Geek: Firewire Target Disc Mode. "FWTDM" allows a Mac to boot up and say to all the world that it is nothing but a hard disk. When that Mac (the "target") is connected via Firewire (aka IEEE 1394, if you're keeping score) to another Mac booted normally into OS X, the target disk is treated like another external disk -- it is visible on the desktop and accessible through the Finder (the Mac answer to Windows Explorer).

FWTDM is a godsend for those times when a drive will be recognized and "mount" (become accessable by the Finder) but you cannot boot from that drive into Mac OS X. You can use it for data rescue (most common use). Another use for FWTDM is for times when you want to mount optical discs from one Mac's optical drive to one where the optical is nonfunctional on the targeted system.

So all i needed to do is borrow a Firewire cable and wait until after work to use my iMac workstation's optical drive to install my copy of Leopard onto this system.

That is the theory.

Install attempt number 1: I got clever and did an Archive and Install preserving instead of the usual upgrade install. One of my favorite tech sites suggested it, and their reasons made sense to me. Sadly for me, the AC power glitched enough to shut off the targeted iMac (the MacBook didn't blink thanks to the battery). Installus Interruptus. Welcome to my nightmare scenario. This is a bad place to be; most of the time this is a reformat. The MacBook, predictably enough, booted to the classic "Apple / Gear" screen that is the hallmark of damaged system files or filesystem. If damaged files, no worries, a straight archive and install fixes that. If damaged filesystem, then I'd have to reformat the drive, lose everything on the system, and reinstall. Your basic nuke and pave reinstall. Fortunately, Disk Utility dubbed the filesystem to be OK. Dodged that bullet!

Attempt number 2: Archive and install preserving user settings. Worked fine until I tried to log into my user account -- bad password. Tried to reset it with the Password reset utility, and it would not reset. Disk util said things were still OK with the filesystem, thank Eris. Then the MacBook started kernel panicking (BSOD for you Windows users). Ick. Deja Vu all over again.

Attempt number 3: OK, I decided then and there to do one more A&I, but this time NOT preserving the user account. If this install screwed the pooch, it was time to bite the bullet and nuke it from orbit. This install was smooth as glass. The system booted to first time setup as usual, Made a brand new account with the exact same name as my old one and a four letter password (fsck, of course). Lo and behold, the MacBook booted to the Leo desktop.

Thirty minutes of user account migration and a password change in System prefs later, my email, bookmarks, address book, documents, wireless peripherals, Bluetooth enabled phone, and World of Warcraft were working perfectly. Not to mention iPhoto and the uber-neat Screen Sharing feature. Now to make sure that I install Palm Desktop (Arch and install ALWAYS breaks Palm Desktop's Transport Monitor), my printer drivers (nice thing about leo is that the open-source Gutenprint driver set I use with my "OEM drivers for Windows ONLY" printer (HA!) is now included with a standard install) and a few other apps I can download form the Internet and I'll be jake.

Not to mention that none of the 'puters on which I have Leo installed on have taken any kind of performance hit. Startup is still fast and there are a few strange behaviors. The only major casualty of the install has been my Windows partition because the arch and installs eat disk space.

Oh well, Windows can wait until I get the optical fixed.

Not a bad night's worth of hands-on teching!

Catapulting the Propaganda on cable teevee, and Why Cable Internet Is Evil

As all five of my readers know, I absolutely HATE television. I do not, and will not own a TV set. While my new roomie, bless his lupine soul, has satellite TV at our place and I had Comcast cable TV at my last place, I refuse to buy a set.

Speaking of cable internet versus DSL: AT&T Yahoo! consumer aDSL beats the holy snot out of Comcast cable for internet access. While cable IS faster and a bit simpler to set up (your computer is configured by default for cable over ethernet, DSL configuration is a bit harder), aDSL is a LOT more reliable. Back when I lived near CSUS, with both my first set o' roommates and my own place, the DSL went down a total of twice, and a power-cycle of the CPE and router fixed the issues. World of Warcraft latency was usually under 25 milliseconds -- not too bad at all. When I lived with Evil Otto, thanks to the wonders of cable "bandwidth sharing" the connect speed would drop to the point where WoW latency exceeded 1500 milliseconds; web pages and email took forever and a day to download (so I knew the game issues were not Blizzard's servers).

Not to mention what Comcast is doing to Bittorrent users . . . never has a problem with Bittorrent when connected to SBC / AT&T Yahoo! consumer aDSL. Of course, if Comcast hoses Bittorrent, it will also hose World of Warcraft updates because these updates are distributed using the Bittorrent protocol.

Moral of the story: do not get cable internet. Ever.

Back to the evil that is cable teevee. Even though I don't own a set, many public places where I spend time have sets tuned to Fox News, CNN or ESPN. It is very easy for me to ignore Faux News and Conservative News Network because of the sheer idiocy the hosts. For some reason ESPN is harder to ignore but the sheer inanity of big-time sports -- not to mention how addicted certain parents of mine are to teevee sports -- makes me more sensitive to it.

Anyway, I saw an ad the last time I was exposed to the toxin that is ESPN that made me go "WTF?" The spot was a generic VISA card ad. What made me go "WTF" was not the usual conspicuous consumption / debt overload stuff that makes me want to puke. The ad is basically a parade of consumers buying stuff they don't need with their VISA cards . . . then one of the parade of customers offered Federal Reserve Notes -- cash -- instead of a VISA card to pay for his purchases. From the look on the clerk's face you'd think the customer offered to pay for his crap with a used condom. Two thoughts went through my head at this point" one was "Why is cash treated like a leprous dead badger with AIDS?" When last I looked at a dollar bill, it said "valid for all debts, public and private." Just what is the Wall Street / Madison Avenue politico-economic axis of evil REALLY trying to say? To me it sounds like "Cash (and by extension, the government that issues it) cannot be trusted but VISA (and by extension the private sector) can be."

Of course, from the standpoint of someone who has a massive distrust for the current regime of corporate overlords in DC, you have to wonder. Is government issue cash money on the way out the door? Perhaps it is. Thanks to the "War on Drugs," cash transactions of more than $10k must be reported to the IRS to ferret out money laundries. Then there is the terrorism angle . . . I'm sure that dealers in weapons, explosives and other things needed for terror operations do not take credit cards (then again, the 9/11 guys got the job done with box cutters . . . and Home Depot takes plastic . . .).

Anyway, there is a long history of private currencies in the US -- Hmmm...something to think about.

Mac and Moto Madness

My new phone arrived today. Kudos to AT&T and FexEx for getting it here so quickly.

OMG, the RAZR is a slick phone. I've always liked how this phone looks. Now that I have one of my very own . . . I wish I'd gotten one a couple of years ago. All I had to do was slip in the SIM for my POS Sony Ericcson, charge the battery for 30 minutes, and I was ready to roll.

This phone and my Mac get along very very nicely thanks to iSync and Bluetooth. I paired up the phone just like it was any other device, iSync did the rest. Much easier than syncing a Palm PDA because Palm Desktop and Hotsync Manager is NOT involved. Now my PDA, my Macs and my phone all talk to each other in perfect sync.

Reason 2 why I'm impressed: it can be powered through a mini-USB power adapter. Mini-USB makes a good data connection for the Bluetooth impaired, and with a mini to A cable, you can power it off a standard 500 mA (high power, same kind iPods charge from) USB port. The power adapter prongs fold into the body of the adapter like those on a Mac / AirPort Express "duck head."

Reason 3: I noticed in the Bluetooth settings that this phone had a Bluetooth "service" called "OLX Object Push" The Bluetooth wireless link allows a number of different services -- printing, headset, dial up modem and others. OLX Object Push is for sending files back and forth. Mac OS X has a feature called Bluetooth File Exchange for sending files to a Bluetooth device. I tested the feature by snapping a picture with the camera and sending the resulting jpeg file to the Mac. That pic appears above.

Color me in-fscking-impressed!

I've only begun to explore this little jewel of a phone. More later.

Oh yes, Leopard, aka Mac OS X 10.5, is likewise awesome. Much more later!