Through the humane application of Science and Technology to social design and decision-making , we have the means to transform our tribalistic, scarcity driven, corruption filled environment into something exceedingly more organized, balanced, humane, sustainable and productive. To do so, we have to understand who we are, where we are, what we have, what we want, and how we are going to obtain our goals. Given the current state of affairs, many of which will be addressed in the first part of this book, the reader should find that we not only need to move in another direction…we have to . The current economic system is falling apart at an accelerating rate, with the prospect of worldwide unemployment occurring on the largest scale ever seen. Simultaneously, we are courting the “point of no return” in regard to the destruction of the environment.

Read The Zeitgeist Movement Today! The Zeitgesit Movement Orientation {PDF}

Dell's Inspiron 910 Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6GHz, 533Mhz512K L2 Cache further delayed!

CrunchGear shares a video which uses some amazing techniques to enhance and edit video; coming from someone who has had to work tedious hours correcting badly lit or shot scenes, this is the cat's meow!

 

Scientists at the Institute for Neurological Research at the University of California have had amazing results using an existing drug in a new way!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/health/article3603996.ece

Not only did AMD's Quad Core dissapoint, now I can't even reach their website because the database server is down...

Okay, if this is for real, then I must get me an iPhone. Quake 3 burned many of my adolescent hours, and the accelerometer!

Seeing as the iPhone is coming in 3G pretty soon, this may just be my ticket!

I recently acquired some high end server equipment and am looking to liquidate, if you are interested, please drop me an email badmark@gmail.com.

Description:

This equipment (minus one unit for inspection) is still in original packaging and in excellent condition.

(8) Egenera pBlade Servers (Each with (4) Intel Pentium Xeon 3.2 Ghz HT EM64T CPU and 8 GB / NO HD)

(8) Egenera pBlade Servers (Each with (2) Intel Pentium Xeon 3.2 Ghz HT EM64T CPU and 4 GB / NO HD)

Although I would prefer to sell as a lot, if you are interested in just individual components, I will consider any offer. The entire lot consists of:

(48) Intel Pentium Xeon 3.2 Ghz HT EM64T CPU 

(96) Micron MT18HTF12872Y 1GB DDR2 400 CL3 ECC REG

 

Below are snaps of the interior of the units.

 

I don't normally post job listings, but this one is to help out a friend.

A contracting company in the Sterling/Chantilly Northern Virginia area is seeking to fill (2) positions: Senior Unix /Storage Engineer and a Storage Engineer.
Sr UNIX / Storage Engineer:
Proficient with Sun Solaris, as well as Sun Enterprise hardware
(Specifically: V120, V240, V280, V480, V490, F3800, F4800, F6800, V20z, V40z, X4100, V880, E15k, and E25k) and SUN/Hitachi/3rd Party Storage Area Network devices.

The engineer is responsible for meeting with the client technical staff to document "as is" infrastructures, analyze collected data, collaborate with team members and implement an optimized, resource efficient, accredit able solutions. He ensures that the team's implementation, quality, schedule and project/task objectives are met on time while sharing best practices with peers and management.

Backup Engineer:
Provide day to day O&M to Sun branded Storagetek libraries such as L8500 & L700 models in a mixed Linux/Unix/Windows environment.

The engineer supports all aspects of daily backup and restore activities dealing with tape backups / rotation, media planning and applies patches, firmware upgrades, testing of back ups, disaster recovery plans, and create accurate documentation.: Administer the SAN with a combination of Hitachi, 3Par, CISCO MDS and Brocade with a variety of hosts running Solaris, Windows, Linux, and OS/X. Create zones, provision storage LUNS, and be able to provide storage utilization reports. All requires experience working on Sun Solaris Enterprise class machines.

The company is flexible on the Storage or SAN requirement for both positions, so if you are a candidate who may be a 'close' fit, but not a 'perfect' fit, please contact regardless.

Please send all contact to Job@PlateWire.com

As PlateWire's popularity continues to grow, I have noticed more web sites of a similar nature launching on a regular basis. After some discussion with other webmasters (including AboveAverageDriver.com's Chris) I came to the conclusion that this niche market would benefit from having one single clearing house to exchange messaging of license plates.

For instance, say Joe in California, witnesses Suzy's teenage daughter driving recklessly down the highway. Perhaps Joe does contact the authorities but they deem it low priority. So Joe goes home and send a "wire" to the plate, using AboveAverageDriver. Suzy on the other hand is registered on PlateWire to receive a notification if any of her plates are messaged. WIthout PlateXchange, Judy would have not received the message regarding her daughters reckless driving (unless she would have checked on AAD's website).

PlateXchange offers an Open Source system for web sites to communicate license plate packages amongst themselves.

So if you run a license plate based web site, or have a neat idea that you think would take off, but have avoided launching it, because others have something similar, now is your chance to participate in a growing network of niche web sites!

http://www.PlateXchange.com/

Open wireless networks can give the right individual an opportunity to access the Internet in a way that makes them virtually untraceable; most importantly you are exposing pretty much anything you do on your computer that involves the network! Here are a few simple tips to minimize potential threats to your wireless network:

• Enable WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). Even though WEP is quite weak and hackable, it still provides a first level of defense by encrypting the traffic between you and your access point. Using 64-bit WEP you can gain some security benefit without slowing down your network noticibly. You could also use WPA, a cousin to WEP that's tougher to crack. Make sure both your router and wireless driver support it before implementing.
• Remove your SSID (service set identifier) altogether. Especially if you only have a couple of computers; set the network name manually. Makes the network difficult to use if it can't be seen.
• ALWAYS change the default password on your router! The default password of most all network equipment can be found with a simple query to Google.
• Enable MAC address filtering. Using this, only your unique wireless cards can communicate with your router. This does add the burden of manually needing to add your buddy's laptop to the network so you can get your game on.
• Turn off your router when you don't plan on using them. Why risk being hacked into if you're not using your wireless network?

Just a few tips from your uncle Larry :-P

It's been a while since I needed to work with zip files, so when I found myself writing a small routine that periodically downloads and processes a Zip file, I need a quick and cheap (note: by cheap I mean free) method to decompress said file. Of course there are countless number of commercial components available, but most come with a hefty price tag. All I need is to extract a file. Wait, doesn't Windows include the ability to work with compressed folders?

Sure enough, Shell32 (Found in C:\Windows\System32\Shell32.dll) offers methods to extract and create Zips! So with a reference to Microsoft Shell and Automation Controls (Which will create an Interop assembly, Interop.Shell32.Dll), and some handy Googling, I was able to create a small class with 2 methods:

• UnzipFileTo(zipPath, pathtoExtract): Extracts files in zipPath to pathtoExtract

• ZipFolder(srcfolderString, dstfolderString): Compresses all files in srcFolderString to dstfolderString

Note: This method does display a Progress Dialog (Even though the proper options have been passed to the CopyHere method), so make sure to handle existing files and paths prior to using.

Below you will find this class in both Visual Basic and C Sharp compatible with Framework 2.0 and above.

Comments and suggestions always welcome!

Visual Basic:

Imports System.IO

Imports Shell32

Public Class ZipControl

    Public ErrorMsg As String = ""

    Public Function UnzipFileTo(ByVal zipPath As String, ByVal pathtoExtract As String) As Boolean

        Try

            Dim sc As New Shell32.ShellClass()

            Dim SrcFlder As Shell32.Folder = sc.NameSpace(zipPath)

            Dim DestFlder As Shell32.Folder = sc.NameSpace(pathtoExtract)

            Dim items As Shell32.FolderItems = SrcFlder.Items()

            DestFlder.CopyHere(items, 4 + 20 + 10 + 200)

        Catch ex As Exception

            Me.ErrorMsg = ex.Message

            Return False

        End Try

        Return True

    End Function

    Public Function ZipFolder(ByVal srcfolderString As String, ByVal dstfolderString As String) As Boolean

        Try

            Dim fileContents() As Byte = {80, 75, 5, 6, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}

            File.WriteAllBytes(dstfolderString, fileContents)

            Dim oShell As New Shell32.ShellClass

            Dim oFolderSrc As Shell32.Folder

            Dim oFolderDst As Shell32.Folder

            Dim oFolderItems As Shell32.FolderItems

            oFolderSrc = oShell.NameSpace(srcfolderString)

            oFolderDst = oShell.NameSpace(dstfolderString)

            oFolderItems = oFolderSrc.Items()

            oFolderDst.CopyHere(oFolderItems, 4 + 20 + 10 + 200)

        Catch ex As Exception

            Me.ErrorMsg = ex.Message

            Return False

        End Try

        Return True

    End Function

End Class

C#:

using System;

using Shell32;

using System.IO;

public class ZipControl

{

    public string ErrorMsg = "";

    public bool UnzipFileTo(string zipPath, string pathtoExtract)

    {

        try

        {

            Shell32.ShellClass sc = new Shell32.ShellClass();

            Shell32.Folder SrcFlder = sc.NameSpace(zipPath);

            Shell32.Folder DestFlder = sc.NameSpace(pathtoExtract);

            Shell32.FolderItems items = SrcFlder.Items();

            DestFlder.CopyHere(items, 4 + 20 + 10 + 200);

        }

        catch (Exception ex)

        {

            this.ErrorMsg = ex.Message;

            return false;

        }

        return true;

    }

    public bool ZipFolder(string srcfolderString, string dstfolderString)

    {

        try

        {

            byte[] fileContents = {80, 75, 5, 6, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,

            0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,

            0, 0};

            File.WriteAllBytes(dstfolderString, fileContents);

            Shell32.ShellClass oShell = new Shell32.ShellClass();

            Shell32.Folder oFolderSrc;

            Shell32.Folder oFolderDst;

            Shell32.FolderItems oFolderItems;

            oFolderSrc = oShell.NameSpace(srcfolderString);

            oFolderDst = oShell.NameSpace(dstfolderString);

            oFolderItems = oFolderSrc.Items();

            oFolderDst.CopyHere(oFolderItems, 4 + 20 + 10 + 200);

        }

        catch (Exception ex)

        {

            this.ErrorMsg = ex.Message;

            return false;

        }

        return true;

    }

}

For those of you wondering, yes, PlateWire is down, has been down for over 15 hours at last count. Why is PlateWire down you ask? Thanks to the great folks @ 1 and 1 (Note: Sarcasm). Since January I have experienced numerous outages with the server where PlateWire lives and everytime 1 & 1 claims its this or the other, most often blaming me. Turns out they have faulty network hardware and don't care much for honoring their 99.99% uptime clause in their contract.

Please, if you are looking for a hosting provider, dedicated server, virtual server, web hosting, whatever, please DO NOT even consider 1 and 1 unless you enjoying getting jerked around by incompetent, inempt individuals who could give a damn that your livelyhood is going down the tubes.

Apparently I am not the only person that has been affected by their incompetence, Dmitri from San Fran launched 1and1Sucks.info which delves deep into issues with this joke of a company.

On a lighter note:

Yes, It has been a while since I've updated my blog, but have setup a plan to update more frequently. I plan to publish some technical articles, especially focusing on Microsoft Silverlight, a wonderful new product that in my opinion will revolutionize web development as we know it. I'll also be delving into LINQ and all of the neat new features of Orcas.

 

Last year I decided to upgrade my laptop (An Averatec with a 15" screen), for something more lightweight. I had seen several ultra portables which made me drool! After some research and bargain shopping, I came across a nice unit, the HP Compaq NC4010 (CNET's Review). One of the selling points of the unit, was that it came "Windows Vista Ready". I was certain I would be making the move to the new operating system as soon as it launched, so I figured I may as well purchase a notebook which will be ready for the future. This option actually overweighed the short battery life (I purchased an extra battery, which doesn't affect its portability much).

Well, after much waiting, Vista finally arrived. I eargely loaded the OS unto my trusty nc4010, only to find that the video drivers were not found, all that was listed in Device Manager was a Standard VGA Adapter! What the truck? After scouring HP's Support web site I was unable to find Vista drivers. After several calls to HP's support center and hours wasted on hold, I've been told that HP does not support Windows Vista on the NC4010!!!

Excuse me? So this "Windows Vista Ready" sticker on the machine and the packaging means absolutely what? It was my impression that false advertising was considered a crime in the United States? Well, I guess from HP's executive actions, crime is not a concern. Well, I guess it's back to XP for now, 800 X 600 at 8 Bit just doesn't do Vista justice.

 

So I'm playing around with yet another video social networking site Stickam. I do like the live video chat and IMHO it has promise, although there are still quite a few bugs to work out.

Here is a quick video I uploaded for testing, it's just me playing some guitar and improvising, so please don't be too harsh

So, the time is here, America's political history is about to change dramatically; historic events are about to unfold before our very eyes, I for one am excited. I intend to research each canditates' position thouroughly and choose the individual who I feel will make more positive impacts in our country's future.

Tonight I plan to participate in Hillary's Web Cast
(http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/conversation/conversation.aspx?sc=8)
which is a good use of technology, hence the question that I pose:

My question to Hillary is two-fold: What is your opinion of the growing trend of web sites that are forming communities of online citizens who are aligned towards similar goals in regards to social reforms?
What is your technology stance; how do you feel technology will shape and color your campaign and possible term in office?

UPDATE: Jan. 16th 2007

They seemed to have corrected their error, so I would not recommend entering email addresses in as they are probably selling them, slimy bastards!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I came across this ad for National Lampoon (Spy Cam (NSFW) it looked like a scene out of one the movies), in order to continue, it asks for an email address, as usual, I am not one to use my real email address, so I just pulled a name of thin air and attached '@aol.com' to it. Lo and behold, the next screen I was an address input screen, already filled in!

I could not believe this! This had to be a fluke!

No, after several very common first names, each and every on returned a real persons first and last name, their full address, phone number, and sometimes their date of birth! I quickly skimmed through my contacts searching for AOL addresses, each and every one returned correct information!

Now at first I thought this might just be AOL email addresses, but then I found that it did return information on emails from other domains, like Hotmail, Mac, etc. More than 60% of the valid email addresses I used brought back VALID information on individuals, including myself!

This is a prime example of irresponsible handling of data. Who is responsible for this?

This is what a quick WHOIS of the domain name returned:

  Funny Free Clips
   Customer Service (pr@companywebmaster.net)
   954-337-9221
   Fax:
   13900 Jog Road Suite 203-251
   Delray Beach, FL 33446
   US

I've contacted "Customer Service" in regards to removing my personal information, I recommend you check to see if any of your email addresses show up as well.

Right around the time I was putting the finishing touches on the initial version of PlateWire, I had an awful experience at a local dealership when seeking service for our family's Land Rover, Molly. The way I was treated by the dealership, Rosenthal Land Rover upset me so that I decided to vent my feelings publicly (notice a recurring theme? . I registered and posted http://RosenthalSucks.com and within days I was amazed at the response I received from other ex-Rosenthal customers, apparently I wasn't the only one they had treated like a 2nd class citizen, it seemed to be regular pattern with these guys.

Obviously, Rosenthal was not very happy with the web site, and asked me on several occasions to take it down. I replied, on what grounds? My claims we're truthful and not slanderous, I was only educating other individuals before they too became victims of Rosenthal. So I offered them this solution: I developed a small site (inspired by this incident) RespectThyCustomer (very, very rough, I've hardly put 4 hours into it), and offered Rosenthal a solution; send RespectThyCustomer 100 or so happy customers that give Rosenthal a positive feedback on the web site, and I would freely hand over the RosenthalSucks.com domain to them. They declined, well actually they never even acknowledged my offer, I guess they don't care to make happy customers?

In the midst of everything thats been going on this week, I received an email from the Internet Sales Manager, inquiring about my current car needs; "Perhaps we missed your business last time or you decided to put off your purchase for a time, but you now have a need for a new or pre-owned vehicle. ". So now they know exactly what I want and when I want it? When did they invent the mind reader, I'm sure other dealerships would be interested in their technology :-P

The funny thing is this; RosenthalSucks.com is actually the reason that PlateWire got it's first article in the Washington Post! A  reporter had contacted me about RespectThyCustomer, and the reason behind it. During our conversation I mentioned PlateWire, and the rest as they say is history.

The sales manager at Rosenthal has since emailed me letting me know I have been removed from all email sales list, you'd figure they would have done this previously, but their incompetence does not surprise me.

It is my ardent belief that a new age is just over the horizon, an age in which the voice of the people will become so loud the powers that be will no longer be able to drown it out.

Let your voice be heard!

Wow! What a day, the Washington Post's Eric Weiss wrote an article that featured my website, http://platewire.com (Washington Post Article Online). I guess the article first went out in last nights' late edition. I was under the impression that we had until this upcoming weekend to launch our new version, nope! At about 2 a.m. I decided to look at our traffic, lo and behold, we had over 10K visitors! So with a quickness I removed certain modules that werent quite ready for showtime , and sans the final design (long story) we pre-emptively launched PlateWire Beta 5.

I'm currently slammed with testing and tweaking all of the new features and functionality, so there will be little sleep for me for the next few days.

I plan to have all features installed and tested by Friday.

Please keep the wonderful feedback coming, we love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Live long and prosper,

bAd mArk

Ever need to connect to that PC you just added to the network? Did you forget to enable Remote Desktop? No Worries! No need to get up, as long as you have access to the PC via Network you can enable Terminal Services remotely!

If you are using version 4 of DotNetNuke's Events module and wonder why the price it wants to send to Pay Pal is always $0.00, then here is a quick fix.

How to use TSDISCON command utility tool to disconnect remote desktop sessions on another server from the command line.

Yay, I could finally copy files between computers using remote desktop! You too can copy file while connected to a computer using remote desktop connection.

 

A company I've never previously heard of, Moixa Energy Holdings, has announced their development of new AA USB Rechargeable batteries. Yes, I wrote that right, USB re-chargeable batteries. Batteries running low? Pop the top and plug them into your USB port for a quick recharge. USBCELL, a new category of rechargeable batteries, should add an oompf to the currently exisiting rechargeble battery market.

This is definately a battery I will be trying as soon as it becomes available.

Apparantely someone at WalMart got a little ansy about adding the Microsoft Zune to their online database. Based on some reports, for a short time yesterday, Walmart had the Zune listed at a retail value of $284.00. Question is, was this price set prior to Apple dropping the price on their 30GB iPod down to $249.00 from $299.00? Will Microsoft come in even lower for this wonderful Zune we all keep hearing about?

Walmart has a whole section dedicated to the Zune.

Only time will tell....

 

UPDATE

It's seems someone at Microsoft leaked the final price of the Zune - Drumroll please - $229.00. Apparantely they've decided to drop some pre-loaded content to make the price below that of Apple's iPod.

 Have you ever wished you had the ability to reorder the running programs on your Windows taskbar? Why didn't Microsoft build this functionality into Windows? We may never know, but at least there is a wonderful little application that makes your wish come true. On September 14th,  Jay E. released version 2.0 of Taskbar Shuffle.

Version 2.0

• Added: sweet visualization when dragging a button in XP (updated look for Win2K) 
• Added: full support for XP button grouping
• Fixed: too much CPU getting eaten while dragging
• Fixed: should now restart if explorer crashes
• Added: option to middle mouse click on a taskbar button/group to close it
• Added: new options window with some cool grouping options
• Fixed: auto-check for updates shouldn’t give errors anymore
• Fixed: few memory leaks plugged up
• Added: new icon!

Not only is this program extremely handy, it is value priced for any budget, free!

I worked with Jay, Taskbar Shuffles' creator, this past year; he's a great developer and welcomes comments and suggestions for future versions. Keep up with him at Nerd Cave.

Link to home of the nerd cave | taskbar shuffle and more

For sometime now, my wife and I have been sharing one vehicle, our trusty Land Rover Molly (Molly was the center of attention during the Rosenthal Sucks experience), so this past weekend I finally broke down and decided to go get me another car. I receive in the vincinity of ten "Pre-Approved Financing" automobile offers (where do they get my name?) so I pretty much played iny miny miney moe and decided on a Ford dealership nearby, Kip Killmon's Ford.

I wasn't really set on a particular model of car, just something small, 4-door, 4 cylinder, newer model. After a quick tour with my salesman Sam, I decided on a 2006 Toyota Corolla S-Type, silver, black interior, only 4K miles. While we did the test drive, Sam and I got to talking about music, he asked me if I had ever heard of an album by Steve Winwood by the name of "Go". I never had, he explained that it was a project he did with some other musicians, he couldent remeber their names, only that it was released around '76 or '77. He claimed that he had searched for it in numerous record stores but had no luck. He also is one of the few people remaining that doesnt have a computer or use one for work, he had never checked online.

I offered to take a look and see if I could locate it for him, since he said it was an absolutely amazing album. When I got home (In my new Corolla) I decided to use my Jedi searching skills to come across this yet to me unknown album. After a few minutes I found out that Steve Winwood did collaborate with a japanese musician by the name of Stomu Yamash'ta on an album named "Go". Unfortunately iTunes did not have this available for download, Amazon had some used copies, but I was heading back over to the dealership in a couple of days and wanted to get something for him sooner. After searching Google for "Stomu Yamash'ta download MP3" I came across LegalSounds.com an outfit based out of Russia. They advertise downloadable MP3 tracks for $0.09 a track! Yes, thats right, not $0.99, but under a dime a track! Not only are they supa cheap, they had some tracks that until now, I was unable to find. I have spent several hours going through my memory banks to drudge up some old songs I never thought I'd be able to find digitally, their library is definately filled with some obscure and rare tracks, a treasure trove for those searching for tracks not normally found on iTunes or Napster.

As far as I can tell, they are completely legit, my assumption is that they are paying licensesing fee's at Russian rates and then reselling to the international market. So until I find out otherwise, LegalSounds is my new one stop shop for rare and hard to find music tracks.

UPDATE Sept. 12th 2006

Motorola.com recently released an update for the Motorola Q, it will completely wipe your memory (not storage card) and update a lot of little quirks I've noticed such as Ring Tone Preview (Boy, was that annoying!), the addition of Wireless Manager, better Exchange Support, etc. Actually I am still in the midst of uncovering all of these updates seeing as I was unable to locate any documents on the Motorola site stating new features and bug fixes.

One definate feature it did take away was the ability to do the ##342587 hack I so eloquently describe in my original entry.

To my surprise the Bluetooth profile for DUN (Dial-Up Networking) was now enabled! Woot Woot! I won't have to carry a USB cable around with my laptop!

Wrong! 

I made numerous attempts to connect to Verizon through my Windows XP laptop using my bag o' tricks, but, no go. I broke down and decided to contact Verizon. Argh, why must it be such a pain to get decent customer service from a company you pay damn good money to each and every month? Anyways, I'm told by a Technical Support supervisor that there is an additional $15 monthly fee to use my Motorola Q as a modem either USB tethered or using Bluetooth. She stated that they charge a different fee depending on the device. I'm sorry, my contract states "Unlimited Data Usage" which I pay $47.99 per month; why should I pay even more to use that Unlimited Data through my laptop? Why?

I've yet to re-install PDANET, although I'm fairly certain it'll work.

I'll update.

Original Post Aug. 23rd 2006

Having recently acquired a new toy, my handy dandy Motorola Q, I was hell bent on squeezing every ounce of functionality from this technological little wonder. This puppy is chock full of neat features, least of which is the BT Remote control feature, which allows me to remote control my PC through my Q! One of the features I expected, which was communicated to me by the Verizon salesman, was the ability to use my Q as a modem to connect to Verizon Wireless Internet service, functionality I plan to abuse since needing to add a $50 a month unlimited data fee (A data plan is necessary when using a PDA\Smart Phone with Verizon, unless you want to pay some outrageous per KB charges).

When I finally got around to setting up DUN(Dial-up Networking, or Dial-up NOT working as some would say) on my laptop, I realized that Bluetooth connection would not be an option, as Verizon disables the Bluetooth DUN Profile (I am still unclear why Verizon, amongst other national cellular services insist on disabling or crippling functionality of these ultra cool devices they so vehemently promote), so I attempted to connect using the USB cable. To my surprise, I did not have a Motorola USB Modem in my Device Manager. I previously owned a Motorola RAZR, so I am familiar with connecting a Motorola device to use as a modem (In order to use the RAZR as a modem, you must make some modifications which require more detail that mentioned, this site offers complete tutorials). I wondered if might be doing something wrong, well, I decided I would just call Verizon and get the step-by-step on how to set this up. After the litany of menus and transfers, I was speaking with an Internet specialist. He informed me that currently Verizon has released the Q minus the ability to tether the device via USB for Internet access.

What ?? Great, there goes my unlimited data access. I mean the Q is fine for looking up an address or a phone number real quick, but it certainly lacks the screen real estate to do any worthwhile browsing. What's a geek to do?

So I began my search, and after hours of hit and misses, I figured out how to get my Q connected and working as an amazingly quick broadband modem, around 950kbps downstream and around 90kbps upstream.

Here are the steps for the Q:

1. Dial ##342587 and press TALK (Green Circle)
2. Select 'Enable' Click 'OK' and then click 'EXIT'
3. Press 'START', select Accessories, and select the new item, 'Modem Link'
4. Select USB (Only Option) and click 'Activate'

On your PC:

1. Plug in the Q using the USB cable
2. When 'New Device Found' wizard comes up, use this inf as the driver.
3. Complete driver installation
4. Add a new Dial Up Connection, select the Motorola Q USB as the modem
5. For phone number use '#777', for username enter 'XXXXXXXXXX@vzw3g.com' (Replace the X's with your 10 digit phone number), for password enter 'vzw'

You now have a working dial-up connection!

A couple of things to note:

1. Sometimes you may receive 'Hardware error' from Windows when attempting to connect, a quick fix for this: On your Q, press and hold your 'Home' button until the menu appears, Select flight mode, wait 1 minute, then bring up the menu and turn Flight Mode off. The connection will work now

2. ActiveSync will not work when 'Modem Link' is set to active, it must be deactivated in order to sync. I recommend that you leave 'Modem Link' disabled whenever you are not using the Q as a modem. I locked up my phone a couple of time when using Bluetooth or other features. If this happens, just remove the battery and reinsert, then re-power.

Note: Anytime the phone is power cycled you will have to repeat steps 1 and 2 above on the Q to re-enable dial up networking.

So, until Verizon decides to stand behind their feature rich mobile devices, this will at least keep you connected when you most need it. 

Motorola Q Specifications:

• Modes: CDMA 850 / CDMA 1900
• Weight: 4.06 oz (115g)
• Form Factor: 4.57" x 2.52" x 0.47"   (116 x 64 x 12 mm)
• Battery Life: Talk: 4.00 hours   (240 minutes) Standby: 192 hours   (8 days)
• Display: Type: LCD (Color TFT/TFD) Colors: 65,536 (16-bit) Size: 320 x 240 pixels
• Platform / OS: Windows Mobile for Smartphones version 5
• Phone Book Capacity: Shared memory
• FCC ID: IHDT56FQ1

UPDATE (8/28/2006):

For those of us who would rather not have to go through all of this when needing you SmartPhone / PDA to act as a modem, I found this great little program that will do it for you - PDANet cost $35(one-time) and definately takes care of the hard work for you. I've tried the trial and will update once I have purchased as well.

 

Take into consideration everything mankind has accomplished, especially during the past century, science, technology, quality of living, etc; and still we must all suffer the reality that is the Department of Motor Vehicles.

White males are more than eight times as likely to kill themselves as women of the same age and the risk increases as they get older, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Bought a new toy! Motorola Q! Windows Mobile 5.0 (Already built an application in Visual Studio 2005, had a bit of an issue with certificates when I went to deploy, but found a quick and easy way around it here), 1.3 Megepixel camera, bluetooth (This really cool PC remote control feature), chock full of geek fun!

 

Atomic engineering helped to develop 110 Ghz circuit speed, a Guiness world record?

 

So, I went to purchase a copy of LiveStats server for a client that wanted the best web site analytics package out there, and lo and behold, DeepMetrix has been purchased by none other than Microsoft! I guess it doesn't come as much of a surprise since Google purchased Urchin and integrated their technology into Google Analytics and AdWords.

Notice my Google ads not working?

I am currently disputing charges of click fraud with the behemoth, they claim that this site caused click fraud, yet they fail to show proof or even give any details. I have furnished log files, testimonials, what else do these people want? Just an ant against a giant. Oh well, guess they will just keep my earnings and I'll switch to another link network. You gotta love shady business practices such as this.

I have lost all respect for Google.

If you don't secure your wireless router, it an almost certainty than at some point or another, someone will use your network.

If you don't really mind, or have a spare wireless router and a linux box (doesnt hurt to have some *nix skill either), you can turn your cyber-thiefs upside down! This page describes some very easy steps to serving your thieves upside down content, or even blur just enough to be annoying. This page has my vote for the day, I'm loading up a Linux distro as I type, gonna have some fun!

Upside-Down-Ternet

Someone close to me, for the past 2 years has been proud to be a SuicideGirl. It was a well deserved honor, for Inocencia (Her SG Name) is an amazing and wonderful woman. From early on she was quite fond of the community of awesomely talented and empathetic individuals. Although with time, she began to get the feeling that the staff, particularly, Missy, were somewhat 2 faced.

One day, Inocencia, came across a website offering pornography content, licensed content you could "lease" to use on your very own porn site. For some reason the girls in the sample pics seemed awfully familiar to her. She then realized the pictures she was looking at were actual SuicideGirl pics, without the familiar SG logo, she was looking at pictures of her friends! How did this happen, she thought? With a little investigation she actually found out that SuicideGirls had actually sold the content for that exact purpose. This was absolutely appaling to Inocencia, she submitted her pics to a web community of like minded individuals, who appreciate the girls as art, not as meat.

Angry at this fact, she decided to vent, to whom else, but all of her friends on SuicideGirls. She made a "Journal" entry mainly venting how she felt and that she felt betrayed by Missy. Lo and behold, not 2 days later, Inocencia goes to login as she regurlarly does and she is redirected to "Renew your membership" page.

What ???

She asked if I could log in and see what was up, I agreed.

Once logged in, I went to her profile and was floored to see that she was "Archived". I ran a quick search through the boards, and found a posting by Missy, it read "For private reasons Inocencia has requested to be archived". What? She requested to be archived? This was absolutley ridiculous!

So, I in turn decided to post on my "Journal" a little message of what I thought of this, mind you I am a paying member. This was my post:

"Actually, Inocencia DID NOT request to be archived, she was archived without so much as an email notification. The most likely reason is that Inocencia reported on her blog that SG is actually licensing their content to PORNOGRAPHY SCUM in order to generate revenue. The truth of the matter is that SG is no longer run the way it was started, it has become a money hungry machine who does not care about the people it tramples along the way.
Inocencia was repeadetly asked to modify or altogether remove her blog entries, what happened to free speech?
It's a sad truth Missy, why do you lie, Inocencia never asked to be archived."

Not 4 hours after my entry, I decided to check if I had received any comments, after login I was unable to reach my profile page. I checked in my account settings, and this is what I saw:

Well, so much for free speech and open minds. I absolutely love what SuicideGirls was when it began, now I'll just sit and wait for the death of this souless abomination.

SuicideGirls
2001-2006
R.I.P.

Update October 17th 2007

Read what other BS SG is pulling on a photographer, geez Missy do you have a soul?
http://apneaticmedia.com/

Just announced, CNN has just launched a new department, I-Report and it's recruiting the entire world to become reporters!

They even include a ToolKit which gives some trade secrets for taking the perfect photo or video.

The proliferation of video devices and computers should make for a very interesting experiment. I beg to wonder how much CNN will censor or shape the reports submitted by users to their own agenda.

A little while back I was doing a gig for a gentleman very familiar with patent trolling. He was constantly digging at me to deliver him ideas, ideas that could be produced into a consumer product. Being accustomed to solving logic based problems through software, it was to be an interesting task. To make a long story short, one of the ideas both he and I prefered was a small desktop device that would:

1) Accept receipts, business cards, scraps of paper with a recipe, any paper within certain dimensions into a double sided scanner, which would scan and OCR

2) Temporarily store OCR information to internal cache, and triple check consistency of reaped data. Snapshot would be sent to a workstation client, which in turn would request confirmation from a user that all data was acquired. Once confirmed, the "machine" would transfer scraps of paper to a shredder device that would then permantely destroy original copy

3) Share data to Personal Information Datastore and link back to electronic reproduction.

Unfortunately, this idea was never followed up on, heck it wasn't even patented (Want to make it happen, let me know!).

Today I read about Intuit's launch of their 2007 version of Quicken personal finance package, which they tout as a virtual file cabinet.

"The ability to easily download or scan important financial documents and create a permanent digital archive inside Quicken makes perfect sense to people and will certainly help them locate these documents at tax time or years later if audited."

I certainly hope this is an attempt towards something resembling my idea. To be free from all of these pesky little papers that I seem to amass on a daily basis, would be a welcome blessing.

I am one of those "old timers" when it comes to HTML design, heck I still remember using Archie to find good junk! Hence, for the longest time, I avoided using CSS for anything other than maintaining look and feel when doing web design, HTML tables were the only way to go for positioning elements on a page.

One of my first attempts was RespectThyCustomer, I was intent on adding rounded corners, an almost mandatory feature for any site looking for the over-hyped Web 2.0 moniker. So I went a Googling for some rounded corner CSS examples and was bombarded with 1001 different way to do one thing. Baffled, and not wanting to spend way too much time, I began looking for a wizard, something that would take all of the grunt work out of this task that is supposed to be menial. I came across several different wizards, none of which truly impressed me, but I settled on one, and trucked forward.

Today, after speaking with a good friend, he showed me his little wizard that he built. Wow, was I impressed (yes, his CSS Kung-Fu is much better than mine), not only is quite adaptable, the code is quite small, and it can be actually be emailed without necessity of attaching an image.

Check it out here!

Thanks Dave!

In 1956 IBM introduced the RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), the great grandfather of the most widely used desktop storage device, the Hard Disk Drive. Oh what a long way we've come! This behomth was the size of two large refrigerators, weighed a full ton, required an air compressor to protect the heads, and it's total capacity was only 5 megabytes!

 The Hard Disk That Changed the World

One fundamental problem with driving these days has to do with accountability. People can do whatever they want as long as a cop doesn't see it regardless of the type of headache they are causing other people.

Well, if you cause trouble, draw a few eyes, or are a great driver then you are likely to show up on Platewire. Platewire is a site that allows you to enter the plate number of a car that you came across on the road as a flag, hazard, flirt, or award. If you don’t have a pad and paper handy in the car you can always call-in a plate number and retrieve it later.

There have been volumes written on the mysterious formula behind PageRank, so I won't explore that here, but I do believe I've found another piece to this puzzle.

It started about six months back, I began developing a small site for a client. It was not the best setup, for reasons beyond my control, the only development server, was the production server (Ugh!).

For the first 2 months, the only visitors to site to speak of were the client, his staff of eight, and myself. As I was primarily working on the server through Remote Desktop, I used the vanilla server install of Internet Explorer, sans Google toolbar. 3 months after launch, the site still had a PageRank of 0, besides a random stumbler, traffic was to this site was negligeable. Around this time, I was working on another web app for the same client, and the topic of PageRank came up. I instructed the client and his staff to install Google toolbar, with Advanced Features disabled (They work from a low speed DSL line, so I figured every little bit counts). Through work achieved on this project I was finally capable of seting up a somewhat more robust development environment.

As I was able to work remotely from my own workstation, not Remote Desktop, so I began viewing the initial site from my browser, which has the Google Toolbar's Advanced Features turned on. Within 2 weeks, to my surprise, the PageRank value of the site showed (1/10), although the traffic was still nothing to speak of. Out of curiosity, I contacted my clients office and requested that everyone browsing this site enable Advanced Features in their Google Toolbar. Less than 3 weeks later, the sites page rank was (4/10)

Now, I've actually been able to repeat this on 2 other sites, and I'm still paying around with the variables. I'm curious to know if anyone else has come across anything similar.

"The internet has become an ever evolving entity with sublte patterns that emerge if you know where to look."
-Me

moo.fx is a superlightweight, ultratiny, megasmall javascript effects library, written with prototype.js.

It's easy to use, fast, cross-browser, standards compliant, provides controls to modify Height, Width, and Opacity with built-in checks that won't let a user break the effect with multiple crazy clicks. It's also optimized to make you write the lesser code possible.

moo.fx has been successfully tested with: Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. It should work in most of the gecko browsers too. Only Height and Width will work in Opera, since that browser does not support opacity.

The developers of this library have done it again, an excellent release from Italy, this years World Cup champions!

Get your copy today!

AMD announced plans to purchase Canadian based ATI for $5.4 Billion. Will this venture pose a threat to Intel? I believe so, both companies have consistenly delivered quality products and technological advancements. I'm excited to see the products they've yet to develop.

AMD’s acquisition of ATI will position the new company to deliver innovations that fulfill the increasing demand for more integrated solutions in key market segments while also continuing to develop “best-of-breed” discrete products that empower customers to choose the combination of technologies that best serves their needs. In 2008 and beyond, AMD aims to move beyond current technological configurations to transform processing technologies, with silicon-specific platforms that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to address the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance. Thus, the combined company intends to empower its customers to create their own unique products and solutions within an open-innovation ecosystem free from artificial barriers to customer success.

“ATI shares our passion and complements our strengths: technology leadership and customer centric innovation,” said AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz. “Bringing these two great companies together will allow us to transcend what we have accomplished as individual businesses and reinvent our industry as the technology leader and partner of choice. We believe AMD and ATI will drive growth and innovation for the entire industry, enabling our partners to create differentiated solutions and empowering our customers to choose what is best for them.”

Under the terms of the transaction, AMD will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of ATI for a combination of $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, based on the number of shares of ATI common stock outstanding on July 21, 2006. All outstanding options and RSUs of ATI will be assumed. Based upon the closing price of AMD common stock on July 21, 2006 of $18.26 a share, the consideration for each outstanding share of ATI common stock would be $20.47, comprised of $16.40 of cash and 0.2229 shares of AMD common stock.

AMD anticipates it will finance the cash portion of the transaction with a combination of cash and new debt. AMD has obtained a $2.5 billion term loan commitment from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. which, together with combined existing cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments balances of approximately $3.0 billion, provides full funding for the transaction.

ATI has received an opinion from its financial advisors that the transaction from a financial point of view is fair to its shareholders. The transaction was unanimously approved by the board of directors of each company. The transaction is subject to ATI shareholder approval, Canadian court supervision of a Plan of Arrangement, and other regulatory approvals including merger notification filings in the United States, Canada and other jurisdictions, as well as customary closing conditions. In the event that the transaction does not close, ATI has agreed to pay AMD a termination fee of $162.0 million under circumstances specified in the acquisition agreement. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2006.

HDNet chief Mark Cuban continues his bashing of Internet video. His blog goes on about the fact that advertisers are dumping their money into Broadband Video due to its ability to better attract demographics, but that the bandwidth available is not enough to sustain a viable product, not one that compares to television.

With compression technologies and fiber expanding access at exponential rates, I do believe broadband video is viable business, and what happens in the next year will decide much of the outcome for the next decade.

On Thursday July 13th, Japan's Ricoh Co. announced it will ship an optical component that reads both Blu-ray and HD DVD. This should prevent a repeat of the 1980's VHS versus Beta battle. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray delivers dazzling high-definition video and can store several times more than conventional DVDs.

Initially the component will only be capable of reading discs, although Ricoh intends to improve its laser to write in all formats.

Blinklist.com (beta)

"BlinkList is a social bookmarking service built on ajax. It is very buttoned up and has some excellent features. It also has an all-star team with deep experience." - TechCrunch 07/2005

Being an application developer, I pride myself on a deeper understanding that I have with web applications that I interact with daily. To a certain degree, I catch myself making assumptions about web apps and their implementation, overall due to the fact that I have witnessed major growth and advancement over the past decade. One point on which I expect from any decent sized membership based app, is that my password be encrypted. Simple MD5 will do, so long as it is not clear text.  When developing any membership system, encryption should be one of the first considerations.

Unfortunately, today I was saddened to find that a site I frequent BlinkList(beta), did not feel the need to encrypt my password:

 

Not only do they not encrypt a users password, they are displaying in a debug statement. Not my idea of a solid application.

They also still tag on "Beta" to their name, I know some development shops have some drawn out development lifecycles, but a year, and still in beta?

Another major flaw which is quite glaring, is the fact that they are calling in-line SQL query from inside of code, stored procedures are there for a reason, use them!

I'll have to admit, although LAMP based web apps have become quite popular in the last few years, there is nothing like building applications using OOP in a managed environment like Microsoft.NET or J2EE.

 

You might think that Windows or Linux has the market cornered when it comes to operating systems, I know I did; I was wrong. Turns out a little known, but highly used kernel, ITRON, is. ITRON, a japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded system that runs on mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and countless other electronic devices.

The BioIT Alliance brings together industries to help the development of new healthcare products.

iCall offers truly free phone calls over the internet

DaveDAQ is a new site that allows one to purchase links based on their popularity and category