jasontheodd

Grump

2006-04-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

My car's check engine light has come on for no good reason, all the movies I bought yesterday suck, nobody is seeding the torrents I want to download, and dandylion flowers have taken over my entire yard.......I'm going back to bed.

We Just Love Advertising

2006-04-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Let me advert on my opinions on advertisments. We love them and we hate them. People buy the sunday paper just to get the ads and see what's on sale. People are dissapointed if they go to a movie and there are no trailor ads for other movies. People download adds for electronics, cars, games, and hundreds of other products. People buy tickets to go to trade shows and see live ads. People stay glued to the ads that run during the Super Bowl. We just love our ads. But those ads are well placed, entertaining, or both. A bad ad, or one that advertises a product useless to the audience, will incur wrath. With the comming of radio chip based ads these extremes will be made much more clear. I see a future where many companies will flounder if people get a bad connotation of them from poor advertising. I think advertising will become pervasive in our lives, but if done honestly and creatively it could be a good thing, and the better the majority of the ads the more a company will suffer if it releases inapropriate or just dull ads.

Supper Cantenna Psycosis

2006-03-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

There I was talking to my darkside inner companion, and he says to me (in the voice of Gary Busey) you need to go up to the top of the hill that overlooks your subdivision and scan the hell out of the place for networks. Having learned over the years that darkside inner companions can be cranky little bastards if they dont get their way, I lugged my fat ass up the hill. Cantenna and Thinkpad (SuSE) in hand I found a comfortable (sarcasm) rock and scoped out the hood. Sevnteen unencrypted networks I say to myself. Yes seventeen unencrypted networks says my darkside inner companion (hensforth refered to as Spanky.) Spankys curious if I can get into the router of any of these networks, and talks me into poking around. Two of them let me into the router using the clever password "admin" and one just let me in without a password prompt. These people aren't very bright are they Spanky tells me. No Spanky, I say, they really aren't.

A new irritant...

2006-03-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

Got a new camera, a Kodak C330 for a cheap $149.99. Bought that specific camera based on a CNET review. It has increadable image quality, is in the 4 to 5 megapixle range I wanted, and has good battery life. This camera had every feature I wanted, but with one draw back. This camera requires Kodak software to use it. Now I reasoned that I could run this under WINE and everything would be OK, and it was. I also know that I plan on getting a Mac laptop (whatever the new Intel version is called) later in the fall, and the camera's software will work on the Mac. So everything is fine. But given my nature, and the lack of nearby medication, I get worked up about these little irritants in my life. Why would any company take a well reviewed product and make it difficult to use? I could understand a piece of junk getting tied to software that would force to to buy another product or license. But a good product will sell better if it also has a great user experience. Look at the ipod or the Xbox 360. People are raving about the great user interface, and last I checked these products enjoy sustained demand. This little camera just proves to me that some companies, even with a great product, don't know anything about the average consumer. It would seem that some executives live in a bubble impervious to any information about consumer habits. Kodak, you made a good camera at a great price. Why did you have to annoy your customers with silly software requirements? As it stands I would only recomend this little camera to Windows and Mac users. It just runs to slow under emulation. For the Linux photographers out there stick with the Olympus Stylus 600 or 800, Linux will see it as a thumbdrive (you will pay a little more for those cameras, but they do compare nicely in image quality and are a little higher resolution.)

XGL and Kororaa Live...

2006-03-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

Xgl was created by Novell to make a point to the world. You don't need the muscle of Apple or infinite wealth of Microsoft to create a new groundbreaking 3D GUI (graphical user interface.) And after they created it they did two important things. First they made a demo movie of it running, that was so in demand that it crashed servers trying to host it. Next they released it to the world as one hell of a gift to the open source community. As of this writing, the only way I could get my hands on it was the Kororaa XGL Linux live CD. So without further delay.

Review: XGL and Kororaa Live

The first thing I noticed is the clean crisp looking Kororaa version of the Gnome environment. I tried opening a few windows and found they now have a certain snap to them. And they bend, as if against a current, when you move them. There are Multiple tranperancy and opacity settings for your windows making reading several windows at once a little easier. And at any time you can hit a keyboard shortcut that will spread and resize all windows so you can select the one you want quickly. Thumbnail images of movies now can play the movie within the thumbnail, and given a reasonable graphics processor you can play several dozen thumbnail movies at once in a single window. Aside from these productivity features and the general clean look of the XGL interface, the real showstopper comes when you change from one desktop to another. Your desktops are in reality the sides of a giant polygonal cube. You can hop from one desktop to another with the click of a button or by grabbing the desktop with the mouse pointer and giving it a twirl. You can stop on and edge and test the power of this new environment by putting a window running a movie on that edge. The movie will play just fine in a bent perspective at any size. The bottom line is that this really is fun. Kororaa seems to be an outstanding breed of Linux, and the XGL interface makes simple tasks fun again. The real power of the XGL interface will come when it is incorporated into its creators brand of Linux. SuSE enterprise will get it first from Novell followed by the next full version of Open SuSE.

Hell of a day...

2006-03-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

Well, Let's see...I got DVD Decrypter to run under Linux, but I need to edit something in Wine cuz it only sees the DVD Rom and not the DVD Burner. Spent another few Quality hours on the Kororaa Linux XGL Live CD, damn that's good. I'll Write a review later today. Tried to reconfigure my firewall to allow both Kpgp and Hamachi to run freely while locking everything else down, without success. May just have to turn it off (or find another firewall.) Don't know why this impresses me, but I burnt two different ISOs at the same time using K3B. Didn't mean to do it, but it never crashed (took a long time though.) Well thats all, I'll have a combined and comprehensive review of Karoraa Live and the XGL Linux environment in a few hours.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...

2006-03-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

The Good:
1. Got a new Sony Ericsson cell phone that I like. A little bit smaller than I normaly like, but overall a good little phone.

2. The new XGL linux GUI, Oh Yeah! Now Apple and the Open Source community have both beat Micro$oft to the 3D desktop. Oddly Micro$oft still brags about the "inovative" 3D desktop in their upcoming (winter '06) Windows Vista. At least microsoft will allow users to use their software outside of administrative mode. As the resident "computer guy" for my neck of the woods, I will be gratefull if that muffles the cries for me to get spyware and adware out of peoples PCs.

The Bad:
1. Over the air HDTV. Not the quality of the signal, I'm talking about the quality of the actual material. I've been suffering through everything from the "History of American Spinach Farming" to a detailed documentary on "Greek Sheapards." OK everybody, a broadcast licence is a privelage not a right!

The Ugly:
1. The Blogger inerface is due for an update guys! This baloony Windows XP style crap has to go, yuck!

2. Most of the manufactured PCs (Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.) that I see on store shelves look so bland that they are nearly invisible. Can somebody do more than just build black and grey cubes? No wonder Apple is gaining market share, they are to only people with a different color paint. What happened to the brushed aluminum cases and bright automotive style paint jobs we used to see just a few years ago?

Another HDTV Tidbit...

2006-03-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

With the amount of information available to digital TV, I wonder what good (and bad) ideas will emerge after digital TV becomes mandatory.....

Digital TV signal can carry 20,000,000 bps of data

Full HD (1080p) requires up to 18,000,000 bps so not much wiggle room

Standard definition (480i) requires 4,000,000 bps so plenty of room to work with, and if your HDTV can upscale well you will have near HD quality anyway.

HDTV Q&A

2006-03-07T05:02:00.000-08:00

Q: Isn't it a law that all the broadcasters will need to brodcast in high definition soon?
A: NO! In 2009 all broadcasters will be required to broadcast a digital signal. High definition is only one type of digital signal.

Q: So my TV will quit working right?
A: NO! The TV's "tuner" will stop working, and you will need to use cable television service, satelite television service, or buy a digital tuner to get TV reception.

Q: The government statements are contradictory and confusing. Why are we really making this switch?
A: Three reasons...
#1. HDTV or Multicasting. TV reception is limited to 6MHz of bandwith that was designed around the needs of our current "analog" signal. A "digital" signal can be compressed to one quarter that bandwith without any data loss. All that extra bandwith now available can be used to make a larger image with up to 600% more detail (that's HDTV) or it can be used to add extra features like web-browsing or additional streams within a signal of the same quality as we are currently used to (that's Multicasting.) A good example of Multicasting would be a news channel setting up 4 studios with 4 newscrews in 4 different languages all on one channel. Just tune in and pick the language you want. And there would still be room to let you surf the news channel's web page while the news ran in the corner of the screen.
#2. Money. All of that signal space that was delivering your TV signal through the air will be auctioned off by governments around the world. The united states government alone could make hundreds of billions of dollars.
#3. DRM. That is "digital rights management." That's the method used to prevent you from copying movies or music from one media to another (copying a music CD for example.) In televisions current analog state the courts have ruled copying television is legal as long as no money changes hands, but digital media (like digital television) is not legaly copyable under the law. And the content WILL eventually be protected, count on it.

Q: Will the cable and satelite services have to change to digital content?
A: No they don't have to, but as digital content becomes cheaper than analog content economics will force the change. (satelite content from dish rental services claims to be 100% digital already, and cable providers are at about 25% on average.)

Q: Is this post done?
A: Yes.

It seem I assumed too much.....

2006-03-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

OK, it seems I jumped the gun with my HDTV posts. I have been asked a couple of times "what do the numbers mean?" So here is a brief description of what it all means.
The number refers to how many lines the picture is made up of. It's like a piece of notebook paper, the image is made up of horizontal lines, and naturaly more would mean more image information.
The "i" stands for interlaced. that means as the still pictures are changed to create the moving image that is a "motion picture" only every other line is changed at a time. This can lead to blurring on buzy analog images and distortion on some digital images. It's worse on action movies where there are explosions and quick movements. However it is less of a problem at higher line counts because these TVs tend to be driven by more powerfull internal hardware.
The "p" stands for progressive, and that is when all lines of information change at the same time between each frame of the video.

480i: this is standard definition (what you have been watching all these years)

480p: enhanced definition (an improvement on a standard definition signal)

720i: lowest quality signal that can be called high definition

720p: mid level high definition signal

1080i: high level signal, things start to get real pretty here

1080p: full high definition, creme' de la creme' of TV signals. shame nobody is taking advantage of it yet.

Upscaling what???

2006-02-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

People willing to suffer my "I got a new HDTV" rant, get to the part where I'm talking about upscaling and get a puzzled look. So I will write a brief post on the concept here, so I can just tell everybody to go to my blog and look it up (Those people who look puzzled when I say blog will be the subject of anothe post.)

Let us assume you understand about HDTV requiring a digital source. Now let us assume you also know that HDTV is just one type of digital source. In order to get the best picture quality you need to have a digital input from origin of media all the way to the TV. Over the air HDTV is best as it has no compression. Sattelite TV providers are next as they have some compression, but retain a digital signal all the way to your house. Cable is the worst, it has heavy compression and it converts to an analog signal and back to digital several times before getting to you. That covers how to get your TV signal, now how about your DVD movies?

Later this year HD content will be available on disc in the form of HD-DVD and Blue Ray media. But you don't want to buy another copy of movies you already own, so whats a videophile to do? The answer is upscaling. Upscaling is marketing jargon for the act of your DVD player taking a raw image file and making educated guesses as to how it should look at higher resolution. The result is a nearly HD quality image. How do I do this you ask. Simple, you need a HDTV with an HDMI interface (that's a compined digital audio/video cable) and an upscaling DVD player. Or if your HDTV is capable of doing the upscaling (check your manual) then all you need is a DVD player with an HDMI interface.

Foot note: The better the output of your HDTV the better the result, upscaling is better at big jumps in quality than in making slight improvements. I would not bother with a 720i TV and 720p would be borderline, but 1080i or 1080p will get great results.

Teladventure...

2006-02-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

I finished the TV shopping I have been going on about in past posts, and actually bought my new HDTV. I tried to buy a display unit from Walmart a couple of times, but I gave up on them the second time they couldn't get their debit card readers to connect to my banks network. So I went to Best Buy and I think I got a better deal anyway. The first one was in the fifty inch range, but this one is a few inches smaller. I'm much happier though because this one (a Samsung) can run a 1080p signal. That's the best that there is folks, and it is just stunning. That got me thinking about my DVD collection. I started to muse about getting an "upconverting" DVD player to improve the image of DVDs on my TV. I am really impressed by my new Samsung HDTV so went with Samsung again for the upconverter. All I can say is, DAMN!!!! Honestly, I may never leave the house. The only downside of all this is my limited over the air digital selection. There are plenty of HD signals beaming through the air, but most of it is crap (the weather channel in HD???) I will spend the next couple weeks trying to figure out which satelite television provider has the best HD lineup. Till then...............

Everything New Is Old Again

2006-02-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

Began my "preliminary" HDTV shopping today, and I am amazed at how many TVs were trying to look like my parents old B&W monstrosity from thirty years ago. Fake wood coloring, optional cabnets that look institutional at best, and worst of all were the set top shelves that remove every advantage of getting a flat screen TV in the first place. Really, most of the add-ons I found were worse than garbage. The good TVs though, were really good. I will probably take a few more trips and wait for a few more reviews in next months consumer magazines before I buy, but I feel tingly at the thought of a new TV already.

Now Apple knows Microsoft's Pain.

2006-02-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

Apple is getting sued for violating monopoly laws. Now the complaint getting the press is the same thing I (and many others) have been complaining about for years. You must use the iTunes music store to download music (legaly) onto your iPod. I agree that that sucks. A decent analogy would be Ford Motor Co. telling you that if you drive a Ford you maust use Ford brand Gass, and never go to a non-Ford gass station. That, as I said, sucks. But the part that will nail them is their active update system (the updates for firmware and software) has sought out iPod software made by other manufacturers and written their patches to disable it. The best example is Real Players software to play Real Media files on the iPod. It took little time before Apple killed the App. This shows a desire to maintain a monopoly, If they are attempting to maintain a monopoly then they must logically have one. These are not my definitions by the way. The "keeping a monopoly so you must have one" line came from the microsoft anti-Trust suit. By the way.........Microsoft lost.
This will hopefully be an expensive learning experience for Apple, they have the potential to be one of my favorite Tech. manufacturers. They just have a bit of an arrogance problem to work out.

From Blog to Book for Thirty Bucks...

2006-02-10T01:48:00.000-08:00

I will be brief. After a lengthy conversation with the fine folks at Lulu press, I am considering writing my own coffe table book. It's really just a collection of blog entry style chapters. Sort of a professional quallity diary of your blog. When it begins I will have to make adjustments to the format of the blog, but little work needs to be done as Blogger was one of the supported formats.
Thirty bucks a copy is actually cheaper than coffe table books cost at a book store, and this is something that can be handed down from child to grandchild and so on. I would recomend this to anyone who feels they have something to say to the generations that follow them. Or those who just want to show off to the hot chick they brought home from the bar the night before.

Back with a vengance...

2006-02-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna do a Larry King style rant list today. So, in no particular order...
#1. Love the new update for the Sony PSP. Many earlier updates were just to cover bugs or prevent hacking, but the last few have really been pretty usefull. Perhaps they are throwing a little more weight behind this gadget. It would be nice, that screen is real purdy.
#2. Last update for SuSE Linux killed my firewall settings!!! Still love the lizard though. Doing a fine job Novell, just leave my firewall alone next time.
#3. Thanks to the X-Box 360 millions of people are now using Linux. I sorta doubt that Microsoft is going to advertise that little fact. The Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution will be running Unix based systems as well. The current Playstaions (1 & 2) and the Nintendo Game Cube already do. Add all the Macs, Linux servers, and Linux PCs and somebody tell me what percentage of the market is not Windows.
#4. Podcasting (and vidcasting) is going strong. As evidence by the AT&T/SBC billboard I just saw in Illinois (route 15, halfway to belleville) that just says "Podcast" in big blue letters. (I like: Hack.5, Sploitcast, TWIT, Diggnation, DLTV, and Security Now.)
#5. Used to listen to the Lockergnome podcast, but lately he has really been a whiny little prick. Somebody get him to quit expounding on fonts and web page colors and I might start listening again.
#6. Last but not least, I want to buy a new HDTV, so be prepared for me to gush (or cuss) about it really soon.

Been a While.....

2005-12-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Yes it has been a while since my last post. And quite a lot has happened since then. Unfortunately none of that stuff was really very interesting so we will blow past it and get to the bitching. I have completly given up on my Nokia PDA. It has been delayed for so long I don't even remember what I wanted to use it for. Well, aperantly I am needed elsewere so I'll bitch about Nokia more later.

Jingle Bells, Windows Smells, Sony Laid An Egg.

2005-11-28T03:23:00.000-08:00

Ah, it's the season to be jolly. Sadly the major technology company "way" has become "screw your customers whenever possible." This may be the last holiday buying season that will let you buy new stuff that will work on your current TVs and computers. Come next year we will begin introducing new products that will require you to buy new stuff just to use the products you already own. The major transgressor will be HD-DVD and BlueRay. These are CD sized disks are much like your current DVDs but they will only play on TVs and computer monitors that feature copy protection. These disks will be the only way to get high definition media on a disk, and will NOT work with any TV or monitor in poduction now. Buy a new one or you don't get in. I could keep listing crap like this, but I would be talking about nearly everything coming out in the next year. Next year I'll be buying last years refurbished junk.

SuSE 10.0

2005-11-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

I have now spent a week with SuSE 10.0. I must say that it impresses me on two levels. First I will confess that I have never seen an operating system with as much pre-installed software or as many features. And sadly I have never seen a Linux distribution with as many bugs. I encountered nearly all of these bugs during a laptop install. This will easily be my favorite Linux distro after the bugs are fixed. I have high hopes for the new direction SuSE is going, but I hope that Novell (SuSE's owner/developer) takes more time with the next release. I would gladly wait another few months to get my Linux fix if it allowed for a bug free existence.

Enough about security

2005-10-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

I am sick and tired of hearing about non secure systems and how they are ruining peoples lives. Online identity theft, computer viruses, spyware....all of it exists because we as a people are trusting of the companies we buy our complex junk from. You want online security, heres how you do it. Get rid of the maleable operating system. Simple, that's all there is too it. Have your customer custom configure his operating system with every bit of software he will need or want and burn it to a unalterable flash memory drive that can be inserted into the PC like a drive, out of the way yet easily removeable. This would, on computer start, create a virtual hard drive (RAM disc) and your computer would run from that virtual drive. Upgrades and new software would be installed onto the ramdisk only untill shutdown, with the machine booting from the unalterable flash drive each startup. The standard hard drive would be for data storage, but could not run or store executable files or any launchable program. Your hard disk would become a storage unit for your text files, pictures, and other work related data. Upgrading your OS flash drive would be nessasarily dificult, maby even requiring sending it to the provider and having it replaced with your new configuration. Such devices exist today, they are used by internet security companys to disect and study computer viruses. They are powerful and speedy compared to most office PCs. And the fractional cost increase would be offset by the reduction in internet security costs. And all it would take is a little bit of training and a slight modification in behavior.

This is not a residential solution, far too inconvienient, but this is a way to provide the vulnerable office computing market with a way to stop being the primary spreader of all the nasty critters going around the web-world. They have the most computers online by a huge percentage, making them critter free would go a long way to removing the threats. Cleaning up the residential side of the industry will be more difficult yet completely free. All it will take is a little education from us geeks, and a halt to the disinformation spread by the software sellers (read Microsoft, Symantec, etc., etc.) All for now, go hug a penguin.

A Quick Complaint.....

2005-10-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm getting sick of blog spam. I have gotten about five per post, and have had to check my blog routinely to delete them before any readers mistakenly follow the links they contain. I am considering disallowing comments on all posts from now on. (Like I wasn't getting enough spam in my email accounts.)

Sorrow and Joy

2005-10-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

I had been waiting to do a review of several new products, including the Nokia 770 handheld computer and the retail version of SuSE 10.0. As these have (sadly) not made it to my person yet you will instead get a review of a 2 1/2 year old notebook instead. The notebook in question is a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T22. I must say that it has been perfect for my Linux based wardriving needs. Combined with a ZyXel G-102 WiFi card, and using the Kinternet network finder, I have been a bandwith borrowing fool. In fact this very post is coming from an appropriated 802.11b network that uses a DSL broadband account. If you are in the market for a refurbished laptop I heartily recomend the pre-Lenovo era Thinkpads, very Linux friendly. That's it for today, I hope to bring my product reviews to you soon. Hug a Penguin...

AGHHHHHHHHH!!!

2005-09-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

October will see the release of the Gold edition of SuSE 10.0, the Nokia 770, and the Serinity movie. Sadly I am too much of a geek to function properly while waiting for all my new toys. So I will end this short post with a heartfelt plea for this last week of September to end early so I might find something else too geek over.

Internet Security

2005-09-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a lot of web-news articles about how microsoft is taking security seriously with it's new Windows Vista operating system. You will pardon me if I chuckle. The principle reason that windows is not secure is because it started life as a DOS entity. DOS was, at the later stages of it's development, entirely centered around simplifying the user experience. As Windows came to be built on DOS it had the same goal. That wasn't a problem in the early days, as security was not as great a concern. Even when Windows left DOS with the 2000 and XP editions, it was forced to maintain that focus even as security issues mounted.
The reason Windows was made so vulnerable to virus and spyware infection is because every account is an administrative account. Only with a serious amount of work can this be undone, and then the undoing will make most of your programs lose function or not function at all. For the non-geeks, it is bad to have an administative install default because that means every virus and spybot then has administrative authority. MacOS, Linux, and other UNIX based operating systems do not share this, and are much more secure because of that lack of a constant administrative account.
Why would Microsoft maintain such a flawed system? Simple economics, changing it will make installing all existing software impossible. And Microsoft is not prepared to "start over" and launch an OS with minimal third party software available for it. The best it will try to do is to make use of an emulator that will mimic the more secure environments of the UNIX based systems. No amount of pretend security will ever make Windows a secure operating system. Windows is flawed by it's own core structure, until that is changed Windows will be very vulnerable to every virus or bit of spyware that can find a hole to get in. Thats why I had to laugh. Windows Vista's security being taken seriously is a lot like taking the gun away from a man about to shoot himself and handing him a different gun. He will still get shot.

Let me geek out for a moment.

2005-09-18T04:15:00.000-07:00

Readers of my blog, those who know me, and anybody who has read some of my Tshirts will know I have little love for Microsoft. But I have always held a real respect for the DirectX division within the company. The DirectX department is responable for the runtime environment within the Windows operating system that allows game graphics to be processed, and they oversee the Xbox and Xbox360 game consoles. In a world of ineptitude they seem to keep creating decent products. I feel more strongly now than ever, that when Microsoft avoided being broken into seperate companys by the U.S. goverment (they paid a fine instead) that they ultimately destoyed themselves. Now they won't die overnight, they simply have too much money and too many standing contracts. But ten years from now they may be forced to break apart to save the profitable divisions within the company. Just think what that division could have done for the DirectX department had it happened before it's profits went into the Microsoft Legal department's warchest. DirectX could have been the runtime environment on every Linux, Apple, Microsoft, and Homebrewed operating system out there. You could just buy a game and it would work, no more OS compatability issues. Royalties from use would be steady income, predictable and reliable income to feed R&D on the main focus, the Xbox consoles. Sadly DirectX is still just a cog within the greater Microsoft rusty machine. I just hope the drive toward mediocrity at Microsoft avoids the employees at DirectX untill legal action or industry reality free it.

Making myself at home

2005-09-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

Must say that I like my new home. Raw HTML......all my reading was good for something after all. I killed the old blog today. It wasn't like a lot of people read the thing anyway. What handfull of you are out there will find this place from the link on my homepage. And there were a few, surprisingly. I think most just followed the link from my homepage. My homepage is just a free Geocities site. I'm not certain how many visitors I get per day, because my ticker was stuck. It had been reading 270 for a few weeks even though I was getting reports of the addresses that were visiting my site. I didn't count but it seemed to be about five a day, different IPs I mean it wont show how many times each has visited. No point paying for a personal domain with so little traffic. Anyway, I made the ticker invisible (so only I see it) and it lept to about 330. So it worked, but the graphic didn't??? Maby my HTML skills arent as good as I thought. Till later...

The birth of a new blog

2005-09-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

I was happy. Blogging my fingers off at blog.com. Being a little security minded, I thought it was time to change my password. I could not find the tab to change passwords anywhere on the home site so, a little annoyed, I contacted customer service. I was told point blank that they "do not support password changes at this time, but maby in the future that feature will be added." After reading that little gem of an email, I replied "That means I (or anyone) could use a brute force password cracker to gain controll of anybody's account and you have disabled their ability to protect themselves. Are you guys irresponsible or just stupid?" I was told that they "have a feature to password protect each individual post." That was the last email from them I bothered to open. And for the record, I checked the individual post password feature, it can be disabled in the main account. You know, the one you can't change the password on. Not that I endorse this sort of thing, but Xavier_modern works just fine at busting the password on my old account.