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www.thisinternetisnot.easier

ICANN is full of good ideas, especially on how people use the internet.

The net’s regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names - BBC NEWS

Despite the fact it opens up a whole slew of stupid domains, it means you can no longer guess a domain name by picking the brand and adding .com or .co.uk it also means domain squatting is going to get more and more common, even if initially domains cost six figure sums.

ICANN - The idea is stupid, work out a better way, and try to find some way of regulating domain squatting not making up stupid ideas and justifying them by saying it will make the internet easier to use, because it will not!

How I became Inspector Gadget.

There are certain points in your life where you can’t help but look back on the preceding years. Officially I have now left college on study leave, until 20 June, which is my last day ever. So how the hell did I end up at this point.

My first exposure to a computer was a windows 3.1 machine in 1995, it was god awful but I was only five and young kids and technology don’t really get on. It was a good few years before I got a computer of my own, I ended up with a Pentium 1 MX running Windows 95, which didn’t last long. I couldn’t play any games on it, and it was stable as a long pole with a plate on it. So inevetably it was upgraded to a machine running Windows 98 Pentium 2, with a decent graphics card and MPEG decoder card.

 

Its probably at that point that the bug really caught me, from then on in I had a slew of applications and experiments going on the poor computer, which I still have under my desk. Three computers later and I made the big switch to Mac, something which I haven’t regretted, and still manage to keep up with windows excluding Vista which is almost as bad as 3.1. I also managed to pick up Ruby on Rails and a bit of PHP along the way, and ashamed as I am to say it Visual Basic.

People always ask me how I know how computers work. The simple answer is I have been tinkering with them for far too long. Every computer I have owned has been broken replaced upgraded and attacked by me, leading me to come across practically every common error you can get. Its sad to say but I can usually diagnose a hardware fault before the BIOS has finished its self test at boot up, and a software problem by hitting less then 10 commands.

The trend over the last few years is people are using technology every waking moment, but very few know how the stuff works. I love knowing how it works, and couldn’t really care less about using it. I will strip things down take them to bits, rebuild them, and then maybe use them. Because of this I have a collection of gadgets and gizmos that few other people my age can boast. It also means, that college work can sometimes come a distant second to a new gadget or blog post.

I don’t procrastinate as such, I just love technology to distraction. Wait a minute that is technically procrastinating. I don’t know what career I may choose, convergent technologies mean that practically any field is open to me.

Best bit is I know there will never be a boring job, technology is getting more and more exciting the closer we get to the point on the curve we drop off.  

The BBC actual seem to get things…

This week the BBC has joined the OpenID foundation.
BBC Internet Blog 

OK, so there are some problems but I do have faith that they know what they have to do particularly with making iPlayer Cross-Platform and stripping the DRM (I think a little wishful thinking is needed on this point)

Overall the BBC have seemed to be more than ready to jump in were the other industry giants have failed or been far too slow, obviously some people have learned from the Music industry hopeless mess. They have been willing to say most of the 15 - 25 year old market is not watching TV they consume their media online and not in the traditional linear sense like with traditional TV. Also an unexpected (at least to me) effect of iPlayer is how many ‘older’ people can and enjoy using iPlayer. I often get the comments “Wow, so I don’t need to tape anything anymore?” response, which hats of to the BBCs marketing department.

I think some good things are coming out of the BBC, I wonder if they can keep it up and appease both the techies and non-techies alike. I know its a seriously tall order.

Good God - Redmond makes offer for Yahoo!

Yahoo Logo2008 has just got a whole lot worse if the deal comes off.

Microsoft has offered $44.6billion to buy Yahoo! At least if Microsoft does by Yahoo!, Live! search becomes half decent and there are some real brains in the web division, it could also go the other way and Yahoo! becomes what Live! is now. 

Even with the combined forces of Microsoft & Yahoo there will still be a long way to go before, they can topple the impressive lead Google has over them both. Only time will tell. 

I’m jumping ship - VMware Fusion

VMwareI just installed VMware fusion on my Macbook; Parallels they crept up behind you. Don’t get me wrong I love parallels and its incarnations, but VMware has a smaller feature set and its fast.

I have been running Fedora 7 through VMware, with it emulating to cores thats right you can virtulise stuff on multiple cores. It screams. I had a little trouble getting the resolutions right (this is because Fedora isn’t a supported OS) but a bit of googling (who knew this was now a verb) and I got it going.

I now have a fully operational Death Star, for use with my many future Ruby on Rails Projects. I am really looking forward to seeing what Parallels comes up with in there next version, all it really needs is more performance and I will have a dilemma which to use?

BTs Top Ten Causes For Slowness

I have been experiencing some heavy packet shaping by my usually pretty good ISP BT, when I emailed them to ask what was with the excessive packet shaping I got this reply.

If there is an EMI then the connection may drop or you may experience slow browsing. Please make sure that the modem is not placed near any of the following electro magnetic devices such as:

1. Halogen desk lamps near the modem or telephone line, especially those with dimmers.
2. Any electrical dimmer switch.
3. Electronic devices, such as stereo speakers, PC speakers, televisions, monitors, microwave ovens, etc.
4. Routing the telephone line parallel to an AC power cord for more than a few inches.
5. Electronic insect electrocution devices (bug zappers).
6. Low quality 900MHz cordless telephones.
7. Any other emitter of high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
8. Should not be placed above the computer tower.
9. Should not be placed directly on a carpeted floor.

How does carpet create an EMI, or for that matter any of them really effect speed of my connection.

Trixbox Pro Released

TrixboxToday marks the release of Trixbox Pro, a more business orientated version of my favorite VOIP system asterisk. Fonality are doing some clever stuff with Pro and its great that I can use it without paying mega money (in fact not a penny)

It looks exactly what I have been looking for, Asterisk based, but stupidly simple to manage, and no editing the conf files manually. I just want something that doesn’t take forever to learn and make work. I am running Trixbox CE at the moment and its one update away from reinstall so it looks like a perfect opportunity to change to Trixbox Pro.

I will have a review posted as soon as I get Trixbox Pro Installed and running.

Trixbox CE - Community Edition

Trixbox Pro

Safari 3 Check, Leopard Check

Apple Mac OS X - LeopardI always pick the best days to go to the Cinema after exams. I got in and the World of Apple has turned to jelly (at least mine anyway). Leopard = Yes! There is anything really revolutionary, but it doesn’t need a fancy new pair of Interface trousers, Finder looks fantastic, stacks (I have already being using folders to do this) Generally Leopard looks like a solid update, and as I said a long time ago, Leopard need not be singing and dancing upgrade. Just fix the quirks and add some useful features, also make sure the install takes less than 3-hours unlike the last 3 times I have set up Vista.

As for safari, I have switched back. First impressions, its polished and fast. Google Reader now no longer has the weird beach ball effect when loading the next lot of stories, its also a lot faster than Firefox loading, Visual Rich Editor in Wordpress works (although it has its quirks). It also has the Element Inspector from WebKit which is incredibly useful to me making sure websites work. It also just seems to feel better, nothing much has changed but it seems to run more smoothly even load web pages faster?

In the process of making this post I have corrected 4 errors, on the website. Due to Safari 3 not liking certain elements. 

BT Homehub?

BTI like gadgets, and I like it when stuff works without messing with (hence why I am a mac user) but the BT HomeHub has been a thorn in my side from day one. I haven’t had bad experiences with BT at all, quite the opposite infact, I ended up with more hub phones than I knew what to do with. This is the start of the problem its all well and good boxing up everything in one place, but when it goes wrong nothing works.

The Case in point being the Asterisk Phone System I use, I spent a good weekend setting up and making it all nice, setting up DMZ and all that jazz. Then the hub threw a characteristic hissy-fit and stopped the HubPhones working. It has taken me to this day, nearly half a year to find a workable solution, so I though I would share, for anybody else in the same position as me.

Put simply I have a good router and network set-up and the HP wireless printer works on the wi-fi unlike the Home Hubs Wi-Fi. So the solution I have worked out is simple, use the Home Hub to run the hub phones and use the original router.

First thing you need to do is get yourself a Super User account on the Hub itself, Instructions here

Second Adjust the DHCP and IP settings for the hub, this step caused me many frustrations. Instructions here (TIP: if you make a mistake here, connect via USB and perform a restore, Instructions Here) The settings should be the same as your main router, set-up the IP address (192.168.0.254 in my case) and DHCP (this should match the settings of your main router) After you have set this up reboot and make sure the settings have taken.

Now to make the whole thing work, firstly turn off DHCP this can be done easily through the web interface in configuration>IP Addresses. Login into the Hub using telnet, and issue the following commands, replace [Router IP] with the IP address of you main router.
:ip rtadd dst=0.0.0.0 gateway=[Router IP] intf=LocalNetwork
:dns client dnsadd addr=[Router IP]
:dns server config WANDownSpoofing=disabled
:dns server route add dns=[Router IP] intf=LocalNetwork
:voice config intf=LocalNetwork
:system config defaultconnection=LocalNetwork
:config save filename=user
:system reboot

After the reboot connect up the Hub to your router and it should all work, if you haven’t configured Broadband Voice yet goto the bt.com/bbv and when you see the pop-up saying ‘configure now’ copy the link and replace the http://api.home with http://[IP address of Home hub] this will configure you BBV settings. Backup You settings now you know it all works incase a firmware update scrambles it all.

Now after all that you should have, you router set-up and Hub serving the hub phones. I would also assume that using this setup would allow you to use BT Vision also, but as I aren’t signed up the service I can’t test it.

The Most Helpful Applescript Ever.

iTunes LogoI have a ever growing iTunes library, but sometimes when importing stuff, the ID3 tags go all wrong, or in the in Japanese/Non-English Characters. So like many geeks I hate having to mess with each ID3 tag individualy even if iTunes makes it easy. Solution CDDB and a little script from dougscripts.co. You simply go to the playlist, run the first script which searches CDDB to find the album your playing, then you run the second script that then copies the page details and puts them in your ID3 tags. Voila! your library is nice and perfectly formed.

Switch To Something Other than IE

Browse Happy logo
Devthought - Guillermo Rauch’s Blog » IE7 still creating problems for developers?

5 Reasons to switch from IE to something else:

  1. Its Horrible confusing and counter-intuitive (in versions 5 - 7)
  2. Its unSafe See Here
  3. It causes headaches on a monumental scale, I only play with web design its not a serious job and it give me headaches I can only imagine what it does to the poor developers that design sites for a living.
  4. Pop-Ups - whilst installing Google’s toolbar and using pop-up blockers built into the latest version IE its still not good enough, with a couple of firefox extensions you can block anything you don’t want easily and you can even stop the annoying “Zap Me!” ads
  5. This is the simplest of all the reasons, its made by Microsoft and therefore supports there own proprietary software and activex controls, which should really be named entry points for spyware and nasty painfully hard to remove software that you simply don’t want

Simply put switch and make your life more productive and Kill Off Bills Browser

Piracy: The Loss of Objectivity and Intelligence

“Unfortunately, many schools have turned a blind eye to piracy,” Berman said. “I don’t doubt that there are legitimate issues that universities must grapple with, including privacy and cost concerns. However, when a university such as Purdue tells the AP that it rarely even notifies students accused by the RIAA because it is too much trouble to track down alleged offenders—such inaction is unacceptable.”Congressman Hollywood: Universities a wretched hive of scum and villainy

This is what happens when a person in power, brains’ get turned to jelly and is spat out by the cat. It never occurs to these people funding researching and going around screaming disaster and catastrophe from the hill tops, to actually look what is right in front of them.

The Music/Movie Industries is Inherently, poor at adapting
So what exactly does this mean well its quite simple. When Napster came along the Music industry looked at it and said “We still good it will all blow over in a couple of months” Then a couple of months later they had a problem. The same goes for the Movie industry. They are arrogant enough to dimiss a technology that will quite clearly effect them in the money making department and try to place the sole blame on the cosumer. The consumers pay them money in the first Place

Solve not Sue
Anyone with a slight business interlect and brain cell(s) would look at the current situation within the Music/Movie industry and start working on solutions, put the money were it is well spent. The industry will never change the habits of the youth of today, they have spent to long in the courts increasing the resentment for that. They need to start working to give the consumer product they want in the form they want, this by no means free.

The idea that forcing your consumers to do something because the man companies say it should be is completly stupid and cause more illegal downloading, just so you as a consumer feel happy your pissing the said companies off. Everybody knows that downloading music and not paying for it is wrong, but when the labels offer no better alternatives, what else are your options.

The Other Options
iTunes Store, has a big market share and a big catalog of major labels and indie music, look deeply at the  Store and you see just what a miracle it is, its there, and in the same moment why it doesn’t give what a p2p client gives. The simple matter of choice is what it now starts to boil down to, what could be classed as the catalyst to this whole thing in the first place.

People want choice they want to choose how they consume media and where, iTunes limits you to the iPod and your PC/Mac, there is a simple solution get rid of DRM and completely and open the whole thing up, and I would never illegally download again.

However, there is one place that iTunes excells at apart from providing a seamless UI experience. Our friend the Longtail, p2p only really is a good distribution system for popular tracks, when you get to less popular tracks you quickly find nobody sharing things.

To cut a long story short we need a solution, that the consumer is happy with and we need it fast else we could see everybody going down to court.

Microsoft Does it again…

A Vista ad i saw at Microcenter, I just thought it was kind of funny that they decided to use a mac in the ad.

read more | digg story

Its obviously a stock image but you would think Microsoft with a marketing budget that could dwarf Dells would spend a little money in getting images of laptops that actually Run Vista, and Bill Gates has once again shot himself in the foot with this along with the fact Vista is now cracked the suposably most secure operating system windows has ever made…

The Quantum Age is upon us.

D-Wave Quantum ComputerEngadget Story
If you’ve read my earlier posts on quantum computers and artilects, you may have thought “Thats all very interesting but its not gonna happen in my lifetime” well you’d be wrong. You can now pick up from D-Wave a 16-Qubit computer.

While its not quite upto the standard of Andromeda‘ we’re getting closer.

http://www.dwavesys.com/




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