When Paula and I were trying to get logged into Courtyard's Internet connection on Saturday we couldn't get connected, the browser just spun it's wheels then gave us a "page cannot be displayed" message.  The behavior was the same on both my laptop and Paula's. 

The typical experience signing onto a commercial network is turn on your computer, open a web browser, request a page and you are magically redirected to a sign-in/sign-up page.  The redirect works in some cases (the Westin most recently) and not in others (Marriott).  For some reason some implementations work with Vista and some don't.  I asked the hotel tech support to log me on from their end but then played with Paula's computer to try to get hers logged in.

The solution ended up being fairly simple, I turned off protected mode in IE, logged into the hotel Internet, then turned protected mode back on again.

I suppose if you're stuck in a hotel right now unable to log onto the hotel network you can't read this.  Ah, the irony.

I spoke to BT today and they had me re-run the speed test.  It's way better than it was a little over two weeks ago (2543 kb/s vs. 649 kb/s).  I still have no idea if it was contention, line noise or what. I suppose I now know who to call if the issue comes back (and that they're responsive).

Web 2.0 isn't a technology, it's a concept: enhance the software (programs) with wetware (humans). WikiPedia, YouTube, Flickr and the like are thriving because the users are part of the equation; creating, editing, organizing and managing the content.

Michael Wesch, a professor of cultural anthropology at KSU created a fantastic video which artfully illustrates Web 2.0.  It's a fantastic romp through today's digital landscape... but I'll warn today's TV generation... some reading is required.

 Via information aesthetics

My DSL speed seems like it's been going downhill, so I ran a speed test.

The rate I should be getting? 3072 kbp/s download, 384 kbp/s upload.  Now I have to sit on hold.  What a great way to spend the weekend.

Before you ask, I tried multiple tests on servers in Ireland, England and the US.  Reported download speed ranged from 175 kbps to 972 kpbs (upload was consistently around 300 kbps). 

"All of our agents are currently on calls.  Please hold and your call will be answered in rotation."  GAH!

Moving from California to a... well... less warm island can make one long for sunnier climates, Mexican food and definitely makes one miss their friends.  Thank goodness for cheap calls via VOIP, friends with blogs and the wonder that is Xbox live.  Last weekend we had a great time playing a very long-distance game of Ghost Recon. Ah... technology... ain't it grand?

There is a whole mess of entertaining podcasts out there and one can spend hours finding entertaining ones. I have a list of my top podcasts but there definitely is one that sits at the top of my list. But before I go on, I'll give a brief explanation of what a podcast is.

A podcast is a lot like a radio show you can listen to whenever you choose. Technically it's little more than a blog post with an audio file attached, but the combination of software and hardware out there has made it very easy to get into subscribing to a large number of progarams. A huge benefit of blogging software is it provides a simple mechanism to an author to publish their work and for readers, a simple mechanism to know when there is new work to be found (last time I talked about blog reading software or "RSS Readers" was 2004 , I think I'll need to share my findings on that later). But I digress, for more details I point you to Wikipedia for a detailed description.

Back to my original point, my absolute favorite podcast. If you are a regular listener of NPR on the weekends you may have had the occasion to listen "Wait wait... don't tell me!". It's a news quiz with a panel made up of a rotating cast of humorists, authors and comedians. Think of it as one part daily show, one part Ben Stein and four parts high-larious. The absolute best way to get a feeling for it is to listen to the show (which you can do with or without being a podcasting geek). Recently they put out a "best of" show which is a great way to get an introduction to the flavor. Just go to the show page for July 8th, 2006 and click the "listen to the whole show" link. One bit of advice: when it asks you what media player you want to use, don't select Real Player, it's evil (and I don't say that just because Microsoft makes the other choice, I say it because I honestly think the Real Player is crap).

For those of you who use an RSS reader or a Podcast aggregator to download programs automatically, be sure to check out the rest of NPR's podcasts, they have a lot of quality programming available.

Many thanks to Patrick for pointing me to the unofficial Get Fuzzy feed.  I can now get my daily dose delivered right to my desk.

Well, it's been a long time (10 years) with Network Solutions but I've finally gotten off my lazy butt and moved my domains over to GoDaddy.  The primary reason was to get away from paying $35 a year per domain and bring it down to closer to ten bucks a year.  A little effort to save a little money.

There will be only one casualty in the transfer: the history.  There isn't much documented in the Network Solutions registration but I always enjoyed being able to go look at the whois record for doe.com and find the registration date.  I guess I'll have to turn to this blog entry to reminisce from now on.

Doe.com - Record created on 27-Jul-1995

Along with this date I might as well record the story behind the registration.

Before working at Microsoft I had a job at a small "start up" (it wasn't starting, so the term "start up" is used loosely) named ResNova Software, Inc.  ResNova’s primary product was a BBS which, among other things, had functionality to aggregate Usenet newsgroups.  Back then there was far less garbage in the newsgroups but there was, strangely enough, a large number of posting from some “John Doe” fellow with the address john@doe.com.  Being the curious sort I decided to investigate who owned doe.com… turns out no one did.  Being the mischievous sort I decided to register it (domain names were free back then… I’m also the cheap sort).  I used to periodically check the account and respond to the occasional “are you real?” or “test” e-mail messages (and they were occasional).  The account was also useful when I was a test lead on Outlook Express and Entourage for the Macintosh, lots of spam to throw at the product.  Sadly, I can no longer play celebrity as john@doe.com is overrun with e-mail.  Surprisingly the bulk of the mail is no longer spam, it’s bounce messages from all the test mail, junk mail and virus mail purporting to be from john@doe.com.  John@doe.com can receive around 250 bounce messages per minute (my previous ISP threatened to kick me off his servers because just the mail connection attempts to john@doe.com were melting his servers, there weren’t even any accounts set up).

Today doe.com is mainly a traffic generator for my blog.  People show up randomly looking for either the U.S. Department of Energy (which used to be doe.gov but is now energy.gov but still didn't register energy.com, genius!) the Doe Fund (doe.org) and, at one time, the Canadian Department of Environment (which used to be www.doe.ca but appears to be no longer, it's moved on, it's an ex-site...*).  Just for grins I let my online life flow into the real world, my Volvo station wagon has the custom plate “doe com” (if you came here because I cut you off, I honestly apologize… it had nothing to do with you, I’m just impatient and meant no offense).

The info above covers just about everything, but it doesn’t answer the most frequently asked question: “Is Doe.com for sale?”  The answer is, “yes”, of course, everything has its price.  Each time I’m asked I sit down and seriously consider selling the domain name.  I don’t, after all, have a mail server set up, I don’t use the domain name as the identity of my web site and even the traffic it generates is nothing but a cost to me.  Why not sell?  Turns out I’m very sentimental and really don’t want to sell it, but because everything has to have a price I’ve set the price at an $3 Million to cover legal fees, taxes and, of course, pain and suffering for the loss.  I figure that amount is suitably ridiculous to drive off most all buyers and if someone does come along willing to pony up the ridiculous fee (heck, it’s a three-letter, easy to spell .com domain) I’ll take the money, give half to Uncle Sam, buy my wife something really nice and put the rest in the bank for retirement.

Oh, I'll spend a little on my car too, I need new tires for my Volvo... they don't seem to last for some reason.  Must be something wrong with the car.

* Much love and many appologies to John Cleese

Note from Reeves to Reeves: Before moving the WhoIs showed "Little.org - Record created on 10-May-2002".  I know the domain is much older than that but I'll have to do some research to find out when I first registered it.

A couple of e-mails slowed my progress on work this am...

A random vacation from reality sent by Ellie:

1) Go to http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/206373
2) Go to "watch this movie", click on "without subtitles"
3) Enjoy the Romanian beats

A fascinating bit of science fiction sent around by Aditya:

In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline...

New Tech News World article: Microsoft and Pfizer Team Up Against Viagra Spammers

C'mon, what happened to the good old days of clever headlines?  How about:

"Unwanted advances from Viagra spammers turn off Microsoft and Pfizer"
                  Or
"Microsoft and Pfizer work to hold down Viagra Spammers"

I'm sure you can do better than that, give me your best headline, click the comment link.

Related story: EarthLink, Microsoft, Pfizer File Barrage of Spam Suits

I love free music... well, I love free legal music.  I may have to wait a while for another Mercedes Benz mixed tape but starting tomorrow (2/8) MSN Music is starting its Grammy blitz by giving away one free song from each category.  A panel of music professionals is going to attempt to predict the winner in each category... then MSN Music will give away the song predicted to win.  So, not only is it free music, it's good, free music.  You know it's good, the professionals told you so.

Now, before you point out that I'm just being a corporate pawn to Microsoft let me say this... first: I am a total pawn, second: even if I weren't a pawn I still like free music.  So there, I'm a sell-out... but I'm a cheap, stingy sell-out... that must be worth something.

There will be one free song per day, starting on February 8th.  Using my top-secret, internal Microsoft sources I've determined the order the songs will be released in is:

1. Tuesday, Feb. 8: Best Male Pop Vocal Performance/Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
2. Wednesday, Feb. 9: Best Rock Song
3. Thursday, Feb. 10: Best Rap Song
4. Friday, Feb. 11: Best R&B Song
5. Saturday, Feb. 12: Best Country Song

So, there you are, in the greatest of corporate traditions a big company has told you what you're going to like.

The broadband world has been here for a while but getting good content over the net is still not a simple matter.  Where's that on-demand, world-wide entertainment network we've been promised?

Well, for you fans of Indian movies there is now a site for you which allows you to download digital copies of movies.  Movies like Raincoat which your local movie store will never carry... or new releases like Dhoom which even aren't yet available on Netflix.  Not only are the latest movies available but you can get them much faster than driving to your local video store and way faster than Blockbuster Online.

If movies with people randomly bursting in to song and dance are your cup of tea, then check out Masala Downloads (http://www.masaladownloads.com).

If, on the other hand, Jean-Claude Van Damme is your cup of tea... simply switch on Spike TV... he's sure to show up at some point.

The reason the World Wide Web is called the World Wide Web is because it’s filled with interconnected links, allowing you to move from site to site.  Do you ever do that?

When I first started using the web, yes, I did click around from site to site, it was kind of neat.  Now, when I want some information I go to a search engine (typically Google, but I’ve just installed the MSN toolbar, but I digress), type in a search and go directly to the info I want.  I do very little “browsing” when on the web.  Two reasons:

1. Many sites actively seek to keep you on their site
2. The web is getting really, really big… wandering is not as interesting as it used to be, there’s just too much random crap.

The thing that has brought back interest in web surfing for me is the concept of the blog sphere.  A blog sphere is a subset of a subset of the web; it’s the blogs (one subset) I read (another sub set).  This narrowing of scope has made it much easier to navigate the web in an ad hoc fashion as I am no longer presented with the overwhelming scope of the web… I’m presented with the web as seen by people I think are interesting (who find interesting links, produce interesting content or are, simply, interesting).

All day today I’ve been listening to a new, free album I downloaded from Mercedes Benz (yes, the auto manufacturer).  Seeing as you don’t expect go looking for music on a car manufacturer’s site and I don’t own a Mercedes (or a Chrysler for that matter) it’s unlikely I would have happened upon this site on my own.  I found it because Paul left a comment on my blog, and he entered the URL for his blog.  Reading his blog I found the info on the Benz free music download.

Viewed as a whole, the web is full of a bunch of random crap.  Viewed through the filter of the people with whom I share a connection it becomes a whole lot more interesting.

For a while now I've been wanting to get more of my pictures on line to share with friends and family.  Here are the sites I've dug up to date.  Any suggestions or comments?

My requirements:

• A ton of space (unlimited would be nice, I have over 24 gigs of images)
• Ability to have a custom domain (e.g. http://images.little.org)
• Customizable look and feel
• Per gallery security

Nice to have: per image comments.

Some photo hosting sites:

• http://www.pbase.com/ (a few friends use this, looks nice)
• http://www.fotki.com/ (I've seen a few good reviews of this)
• http://www.snapfish.com/ (an old stand-by)
• http://www.smugmug.com/
• http://photobucket.com/
• http://www.imagemagician.com/

Some photo review sites (they tend to be geared to artists who want to get feedback, some only allow you to upload one image per day).  Not quite what I need.

• http://www.photoforums.com/
• http://www.shuttercity.com/
• http://www.usefilm.com/
• http://www.webaperture.com/
• http://www.webphotoforum.com/
• http://www.TrekLens.com/
• http://www.Nfolio.com
• http://www.photo.net/
• http://www.photopoints.com/

I was chatting with Omar over lunch the other day and he was telling me about his latest wireless network setup and his frustration with trying to troubleshoot connection drops.  I feel his pain... my wireless network is a combination of one Microsoft base station (naturally) and two Linksys bases (two totally different models, of course).  I was unable to connect to the network when in my bedroom for about 6 months.  Everything worked everywhere else... but in the bedroom?  No.  Gah!  I think I solved the problem, but I'm not sure.  I'll have to document that later after I'm sure I understand it (no use posting embarrassingly wrong advice... I know I'm an idiot, but why tell others? I'll keep the illusion up as long as I can. ).

So... where am I going with this rambling post with zero useful content thus far?  NetStumbler.  Omar commented that he wished he has a tool to tell him all the networks in his area and on what channel they communicated (yes, you can change the channel on your wireless base station for better connectivity).  There are probably a bunch of tools, the one I've found useful is NetStumbler. 

Netstumbler is a fun little app that can provide hours of entertainment for geeks.  This software will look for WiFi networks in range, document their SSID (essentially the network name), if they are encrypted, their channel, the signal to noise ratio and, if you have a GPS on your laptop, the coordinates.  It's a very useful tool for working out network issues... or for finding open networks (war driving is apparently a popular hobby).  Check it out if you have some time to kill or feel like living out your hacker fantasies.

Oh, war driving... Do you remember War Games with Matthew Broderick?  If you don't, rent it, it's a fun movie.  In War Games Matthew's character was trying to find a game company's mainframe by having his computer methodically dial every single phone number in a given area code and logging the phone numbers connected to computers - he was war dialing.  War driving is the modern equivalent where people put a WiFi-equipped laptop in their car and drive around logging open wireless networks.  Using software like NetStumbler you are able to drive around then dump the results to a program like Microsoft MapPoint to graph out all the open networks in your area.  Why?  Geeky fun, mischief or whatever reason doesn't really matter, it just reminds you that you shouldn't assume that because your computer is in your house that your data is safe.  My advice: turn on some form of encryption (WEP for most), hide the SSID and enable MAC filtering.  If you don't know how to do that, check your manual, it's worth learning how.

Update: obligitory slashdot link

Wow, who'd have thought this would happen? 

And before any conspiracies start... no, Microsoft didn't do it. :P

The problem is a new worm on the loose is causing a distributed attack on search engines in it's quest for new e-mail addresses to which it can send itself (my English teacher just rolled over in her grave).

Okay class... repeat after me: “I will update my anti-virus software once a week if not more often.”

News.com story...

Google, other engines hit by worm variant
By Richard Shim and Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

              
update Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo.

The attack also affected smaller engines, including Alta Vista, a Yahoo subsidiary, and Lycos.

A Lycos representative said the company is aware of the problem and is working to block the performance obstacles. A Google representative said the company was working to figure out what was happening.

FULL STORY

PCWorld has a good write up on PC myths... but read carefully as their ratings seem to contradict the text at times.  They rate the responding to Spam myth as a level 4 out of 5 on the bogus meter but then include this quote:

"Knowing who to opt out from is key," says Schwartz. "Opting out of legitimate companies drops you off their lists, but when you do that with 'real' spammers, the results are unclear."

So, what is it?  A myth?  If the results are unclear can you be sure?

A summary of the myths (go to the article for full details).

Busting the Biggest PC Myths
We expose the bad advice that wastes your time and money.

1. Magnets zap your data.
2. Using a cell phone on a plane interferes with the navigation and communications systems of the aircraft.
3. If you don't 'stop' a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you'll screw things up.
4. Cookies track everything you do on the Internet.
5. Windows' Japanese edition uses haiku error messages.
6. Terrible things happen if you turn off your PC without shutting down Windows.
7. Opting out of spam gets you even more spam.
8. Hackers can destroy data on your computer's hard drive.
9. Turning off your PC daily to save power shortens its life.
10. The government reads everyone's e-mail.
11. Saddam Hussein bought PlayStation 2 consoles to use in Iraq's weapons program.
12. DOS is dead.
13. Only a pricey surge protector can keep your devices safe.
14. If you don't periodically run your laptop batteries down to zero, you'll lose battery life.
15. If you don't use an antistatic wrist strap while tinkering with a PC, you'll ruin hardware.
    

I'm always amazed at how far the on-line world has come in the last ten years.

I'm even more amazed at how much I assume everyone else is amazed by that. 

• I live in a special little world called Silicon Valley.
• I live in a world where everyone has an e-mail address (and most have three). 
• I live in a world where I look suspiciously at any business that doesn't have a web site (even Internet addiction centers have web sites).
• I live in a world where anything that can't be Googled doesn't exist.
• I live in a world where most things that can be Googled still don't exist (killed in a rocket car?  yeah, right).
• I live in a world where WWJD stands for What Would Jobs Do?
• I live in a world where people will buy a Mini because it's compatible with their iPod.
• I live in a world where a reality distortion field isn't science fiction, it's protected by the ADA.
• I live in a world where the coolest computer company only has a fraction of the market and makes most of their money selling MP3 players.
• I live in a world where a project doesn't end when you ship, it ends when you get the T-Shirt.

Ah... paradise.

While I was only joking about selling addresses (see comments) it appears the AOL workers are a little less loyal to their users.

A snippet of the whole article from Reuters:

US Charges AOL Worker Sold Customer List for Spam
Wed Jun 23, 2004 07:07 PM ET

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. investigators said on Wednesday they had arrested an America Online employee and a Las Vegas marketer for stealing the Internet provider's customer list and selling it to a purveyor of "spam" e-mail.

AOL members were flooded with millions of unwanted messages because of the scheme, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court in New York.

Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, was charged with stealing a list of 92 million AOL customer screen names and selling them to Internet marketer Sean Dunaway of Las Vegas.

[snip...]

You always hear about people getting scammed, you can't swing a cat without hitting a little old lady who lost her identity on the Internet.  How often do you ever hear about scammers getting scammed?

Mike pointed me to the hilarious bulletin board discussion chronicling the exploits of community of tech savvy people and what happens when a con artist tries to cheat one of them out of a laptop.

A warning in advance... the thread is really really really long.  You may want to start by reading it to get the feel (it is worth digging in a little to enjoy the group as they feed off each other).  When you get overwhelmed by the volume move over to one of the summary pages to get the Cliff's Notes version.

Are you a geek? C'mon, it's not that bad, beats being a nerd. Geeks can be cool in their own way, but nerds, well, you know... At any rate... go get some geek humor from User Friendly Comics, you'll be glad you did. Embrace your inner geek.

You wanna hear the story? I was always amused at how many people put their e-mail address as "John@Doe.com" in NNTP forums. Noting that doe.com wasn't registered I decided to be THE john@doe.com, yeah, I'm a geek (I have personalized plates to match too). So you see, I'm attached to the domain.

Is it for sale? Sure, everything is. Come to me with 7 figures and we'll talk.:D