Today, I was doing a little online shopping using my Nokia N800. Ikea has a few price cuts on bookcases and they looked interesting, so I wanted more information.

I visited ikea.com and clicked United States – crash. Not just a browser crash, but a forced reboot of the entire device. SWEET! The N800 uses a modified Mozilla browser running a version of Linux, BTW. This isn’t a normal cell phone or otherwise limited browser. I’m not running with any special permissions either. Crashes shouldn’t be possible.

Good job Ikea. My N800 is 3 yrs old and this is the first time it has crashed to a reboot. Impressive. May I suggest you review your web site for errors?

Happy Texas Independence Day!

A little history about it.

1836 – so, 174 years.

Nothing really to report this week. Doing RMA stuff on an old Antec 550W PSU and getting an estimate to fix the Dell laptop.

A Newspaper with no Date

Crazy, right?

We’ve all come across web article pages that don’t have date on them. In the web-time, days or years can matter, yet when a website doesn’t tag every article with a date, you have no idea how current there information is. This is fine for a very small subset of articles, but when reading an article on Windows7 or Xen virtualization, certainly you can understand that the date of the article provides context for what the writer knew. If the Windows7 article was written in August 2009 or earlier, they were looking at an RC, Release Candidate, not the final publicly released version.

Reading a blog or article that isn’t a date tagged is like getting a newspaper without a date.

This applies to any document. Think of how much adding just a date to a page and document tell each reader. What happens when there are 2 or more versions of a document? Well, if every page has a date on it, there is not issue. The reader KNOWS which is the latest information.

Time matters, so please put a date on your articles, blogs, websites, AND paper documents.

The entire world knows that Haiti was hit by an magnitude 7 earthquake recently. This was a terrible disaster.

The Haitian government said in this article that they can lead the rebuilding effort.

Haiti’s government is ranked 168 out of 180 on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Should a government with that level of worldwide mistrust be allowed to manage this amount of money?

I received a WD TV Live, TVL, for Christmas to replace my aging MediaGate MG35 network media player. The MG35 is still working and has a nice GUI, but doesn’t support many of the newer media file formats like x264, mkv or high definition content. Also, the MG35 requires anonymous access via samba to the media. I’ve locked it down by IP, but would rather have userid/password controls.

Install miniDLNA instructions below.

I saw a headline about stolen laptops here and thought I’d mention my methods before reading the other article.

Before Stolen Laptop

The most important stuff happens before your laptop is stolen, but you need to do it. It isn’t automatic.

Well, I’ve arrived. Seems besides winning the European, Spanish, Hong Kong, Singapore, and world wide lotteries, I’ve also won 10% cash back from VISA every month. I just need to enroll by clicking on a web link. Sweet!

WOW! That’s a deal!

Except it is a scam.

So whenever it snows here, even flurries, almost everything public closes down. Stores stay open, but with highly reduced staff.

On Friday, 1/8/10, the Atlanta area had a snow event. It began on Thursday evening and dropped less than 1 inch of snow as far as I could see.

Here’s a photo of my back yard 3 days later. Not much melt has happened due to daily hi temperatures of less than 30degs.

Roads were closed in Atlanta and so were churches, schools, and many workers telecommuted to their office jobs.

We’ve all heard of the RIAA and MPAA, but what about laws being enacted in South Korea to prevent online storage? Here are a few articles about Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA):

• PCWorld
• US Trade.Gov
• NPR
• ComputerWorld
• EU Korean Free Trade

These are being added to international agreements, since they cannot pass in representative government legislatures. International pressure to sign treaties bypasses representatives in the USA. The House has no say in treaty approval, only the Senate.

So, laws that cannot be passed still become law, and by treaty, must be enforced both locally and internationally.

INAL, but as I read the draft treaty text, I see protections for artist, producers and owners to use ineffective DRM, yet anyone who may circumvent the DRM for practical reasons

• player isn’t available
• player broke
• DRM doesn’t work on a computer
• you don’t like DRM,
  is now automatically a criminal. Yes, criminal penalties, not just civil. There are no protections for consumers or end users who purchase a product with a reasonable expectation of lifetime use to be able to use that product for life. We’ve already seen DRM protected purchases fail. Did you buy any Microsoft PlaysForSure crap? The Zune cannot play PlaysForSure music purchased from the MSN Music Store. Nice. If you remove the DRM from our purchase so you can listen, you are a criminal under this treaty.* There is no protection for you.

Pharmaceuticals and agriculture products are included in the protections.

What I see is an agreement written by big business to ensure their current method of profit generation continues for 70 years after the death of the inventor, artist, actor, or producer. For example, you create a song at age 25 and die at age 75. Then it is another 70 years (at least, longer periods in law is ok too), before it falls into public domain.

There’s a provision for Three Strikes for alleged infringement without any legal proceeding. Three allegations and you are out is more like it. What is out? Your internet connectivity is canceled and that action is shared with other internet providers. I didn’t see a time limit on the disconnection or an appeal process included. Parents, watch your teens closely. Their actions could get you disconnected from the internet for life!

Here is an ACTA summary- written by the EFF.

How does this all track back to the prevention of internet storage in South Korea?

Time to write your senators. and have public debates over this treaty. We don’t want any back room agreements where consumers are locked out.

I like copyright, patents, and trademarks where they protect businesses for a reasonable amount of time. What is reasonable? That’s the real question. 10 years, 20, 50, 70, 170 years? That’s the issue. My understanding of the intent for copyright and patents is to allow a reasonable period of time for the creator to make a profit, but not an unlimited time to lock out all competition. I believe Disney has abused both copyright and trademark protections to save Micky Mouse from outside abuse. Trademarks last in perpetuity as long as it continues to be used commercially by its owner. Boo.

Often, the best implementations of new technologies is performed by the 2nd and 3rd to market, not the inventor. We’re trying to help all mankind, not just those who have lawyers to file for copyright, patent and trademarks.

That is just crap. Do we want a treaty forced on us that may be amended in perpetuity too?