JDPFu.com 2025

If you have more than a few accounts, you should be using a password manager. I didn’t use one for years and years, then I tried one about a year ago and became addicted. I bet you’ll like it too after you try it.

I have a TiVo connected to a digital box from the company and a Windows7 Media Center PC with a Hauppauge ClearQAM tuner. Today I planned on catching up on a little TV that should have been recorded last night, but wasn’t.

See, now that my VCRs are worthless since Comcast went 95% digital and requires a tuner box to get all but 5 network channels (ok, they also give 15 shopping channels and 8 community access channels too – great huh?), I use the 7MC PC to record programs when there’s a conflict with another or when I really don’t want to miss a specific show due to a screw up with the channel changing on TiVo or QAM tuner.

Be certain to check the comments for updates as I learn them.

In a prior article here, I outlined some important things to ensure when you’re looking for a new laptop. With the release of Windows7, some of those things aren’t necessarily as important as they were under Vista and I’ve learned some new things in my shopping for a new laptop myself.

If you work in media or IT, you’ve probably already heard about ACTA, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

If not, here’s a summary to get you up to speed on it. Hopefully, you’ll contact your Senator, Congress-person and President and let them know you don’t like attempts to bypass your existing methods to pass laws.

I read lots of news every day. This morning, this story was found and after reading the headline, my first thought was …

If you use a portable device, like a smart phone or if you use a computer at all, then you’ve come across the URL shorteners like bit.ly, goo.gl, etc. The title of this entry is URL Shorteners are Dangerous, but why?

The main reason I consider them dangerous is when you click on a shortened URL, you have no idea where it will really take you. None whatsoever. It could be a simple redirector or to download a file or embed javascript or download anything. Javascript is still dangerous.

We’ve all heard not to click on any links in an email, yet most of us still do. I know some people who won’t click on any link from anyone in an email, period. There’s a trade off.

I’m not suggesting there isn’t any place where a shortened URL isn’t more convenient or easier to type. I am just saying that without more information about the final link location, I’ll not be clicking on any of those … ever.

There are tools to preview the final location of the shortened URL. I’ve never used any, but suspect they make money just like free DNS services and URL shorteners make money – that is by selling our use data .

Call me paranoid, but also call me unhacked and aware of internet privacy. I surf without javascript enabled, BTW.

I don’t claim to understand how US government agencies determine what a reasonable fine is for companies found of wrong doing or impeding solutions, but is $53 per incident enough? Serious? I’ve never been impressed with fines from the government. They aren’t even enough to remove profits from the infraction, IMHO.

According to this BBC article, Toyota is fined $16.4M for something that impacted at least 2.3 million vehicles. So, $16.4/2.3 = $53. Nice. I don’t think that is much of a deterrent to prevent the behavior for Toyota OR any other manufacturer in the future. Is my math wrong?

I’d think somewhere between $500 and $1500 per vehicle would be a more appropriate penalty to correct future behavior. It needs to hurt a little. I’ve worked in large corporations and know that while $16M is a bunch of money, it isn’t really that much. Heck, I’ve worked a laptop replacement project that was $25M.

I also understand that Toyota is an excellent automobile company and we don’t want to unjustly penalize them, their workers, or future customers. Like many of us, the managers involved didn’t know how serious the problem was and down played it for as long as they could. Being completely open concerning any issue with a consumer product isn’t part of any corporate culture that I’m aware. I’m reasonably certain if more than a few actual incidents happened and anyone were hurt, then Toyota would have been up front. When I worked on public impacting systems, I always pictured how my family would be impacted if there were any issue with the work. I believe the Toyota engineers do the same with their issues and fixes. Doing the right thing is easiest when you are close to the issue. The spin team is what concerns me – both the government AND the company spinners.

We all know that companies don’t pay any taxes OR fines with internal money, right? The fine paid will probably become part of the cost of every vehicle going forward when pricing is determined. I would add that to my checklist if I were on the accounting team and marketing team setting prices.

Another way to choose the fine amount may be to base it off the CEO + President complete annual pay packages including bonuses. Just a thought, I dunno. I read that the Toyota CEO earns less than $1M annually, while the GM CEO earned over $14M, so perhaps that isn’t a good idea for underpaid CEOs. Of course, my data was just found with a google search, so it could be wrong.

Blog Spam

I’ve noticed the number of blog spammers have increased significantly in the last 2 months. They use general “good job” or “nice work” comments, then leave their email and commercial weblink. I assume these are spam-bots – automatically doing it.

Moderated Comments

Since all comments are moderated here, I’ll do my best to weed them out if they aren’t related to the posted article. Only on-topic links will remain and generic posts will not be allowed. It isn’t like there are hundreds of spam posts daily. I know this will reduce the number of comments, but that is the price for non-spam comments today. Sorry. If you’re comment is on topic, it will be posted. Basically, any comment that is remotely on topic will be posted. Just those that are commercial or links to unrelated content will not be posted. For example, if the post is about virtualization and you provide a comment with links to an online vitamin store, that will not be posted. OTOH, if links in comments are to other articles on virtualization or even commercial virtualization products, then it will be allowed. The decision of moderators leans towards posting comments when in doubt.

Test Messages

I guess some people don’t want to bother writing a longer message if it won’t be posted. I get that, but a test message is not on topic either and won’t be posted. How does that comment add to the conversation?

Further, I’ve disabled comments for older articles. I don’t recall the actual cutoff day. It is probably 90 or 120 days, so it won’t impact the few, loyal, readers. Those articles do not have any way to enter any comments. If there is a comment field displayed, then your comment will be seen by the moderators.

Hello, Nice Article and other non-related comments were allowed previously, but are not going forward. Sorry. Those do not add to the conversation.

English Only Please

This is an English language blog. While we like worldwide viewers and understand that not everyone reads English, that is simply a limitation of our skills. I have translated some non-English comments previously. None were on-topic to the post. We may attempt to translate comments again, but you can visit translate.google.com just as easily as we can.

No Sign-up Required

We do not require any sign up to post comments. Heck, we don’t really want your email address either. An alias is preferred. If you leave an email address or web address, it will probably be included in the comment and publicly seen. That seems to be the way this software works. Our systems do log IP addresses, just like every other system out there does.

Example Blocks

A few of these spammers have been blocked at the router. Sure they can come from a different subnet, but I bet they won’t.

The financial planning and foreign internet diamond sellers are the funniest. Blocked.

Automatic Moderation

I’ve looked into viable solutions to allow non-moderated comments here and didn’t find one that I was willing to implement.
Here’s a site from 2005 with specific ideas to reduce, if not eliminate internet marketing on blogs. About a year ago, I came across another site where the blogger had placed a static Captcha with an simple arithmetic problem inside the image. The answer was always “42.” He never changed it, Never, yet it prevented 100% of the blog spam. I may introduce that here.

If I were running MT or blogger or some other highly popular blog tool, then I’d have a bigger issue. Since I’m running a little used Ruby blog with few internet users, I’m fairly safe just like Linux and Apple are safe compared to Microsoft.

Today, we are manually moderating comments about once a day.

Comment Edits

Occasionally, comments may be edited by a moderator to remove offensive content. We will say in the post that it was edited. Cuss words will probably be removed or exchanged for #$#%. Keep it clean, please.

Exceptions

We are people and regardless of the statements above, there will be exceptions for posting and not posting. Friends who post can say almost anything.

I use virtualization … a lot. I started writing an article entitled Converting WinXP from VirtualBox to KVM today, but couldn’t due to issues.

The latest thing I’m trying to accomplish is to migrate to KVM for all the current VM needs that I have. This may not be a good idea since we’re running Xen, VirtualBox and ESXi VM hosts. Today I attempted to convert a WindowsXP Professional install running under VirtualBox 3.x to KVM. I’ve attempted this conversion before, but it failed, badly. This time, I’m using VMware Converter and it failed before it even got started.

Many people run Windows (*any version) because it came with their PC and for no other reason. They have a copy of Windows to run games or business applications because that is the platform where those programs run.

The Question

Imagine an ideal world where Windows or MacOS or Linux or any other OS didn’t matter, programs just worked regardless of the OS.

Which OS would you run if all your programs actually ran perfectly regardless of OS?

1. Windows-Something ($147)
2. MacOS – OSX ($28)
3. Linux-Something ($ Free)
4. Other (*BSD, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, VMS, MVS, etc).

I’m curious. Please take a second and enter your choice. No registration is needed.

Why do I ask? Well, it is tax time here in the States and all the tax programs run under Windows. Further, I can download a version for much less money than going to a store and buying it, but the download tool only supports Windows. I’d prefer Linux for downloads and running the program, but that isn’t an option – even under an emulator like WINE. So while it appears to the software vendor that I’ve chosen the Windows version, that really isn’t the case. I don’t have any choice. Are you like me?