This Old Blog

I walked into work this morning and turned on my notebook, and what am I greeted with but a Symantec AntiVirus Notification that there is adware, Adware.CPush , as part of the Second Life uninstaller. This showed up after a forced upgrade of the Second Life client software over the weekend. I barely have time for a first life, let alone time to waste in Second Life. I got involved October of last year out of curiosity, based on comments from Dr. Roger Smith of PEO-STRI. Since then my sojourns into Second Life have been infrequent at best, and every time I have fired it up I've been forced to download and install one client upgrade after another. Looks like it's time for me to move on and reclaim a bit of disk space being consumed by the Second Life client. UPDATE Looks like I was too trusting of Symantec. The detection of Adware.CPush in the Second Life uninstaller was a false positive. I found an entry on Roger's Information Security Blog that detailed the same problem, ...

Criticizing a product as poor as the Nokia tablets accomplishes nothing in the long run. What's the point unless you can find something better? From a technology standpoint you can make a very good argument that the Apple iPhone is better, but the iPhone still has some significant disadvantages, not the least of which is the need to get an AT&T Wireless contract. It looks like such a better product may be shipping around mid-August. Manufactured by Asus, the Eee PC is a folding ultra-portable with a 7" display. Unlike the OLPC, the Eee is aimed at the general market. From what I've been able to gather, the Eee should come with the following features: Display： 7" 800 x 480 CPU & Chipset: 900MHz Intel Dothan based Pentium M CPU, 910 mobile chipset OS: Linux and Microsoft Windows XP compatible Communication: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet; 56K modem WLAN: WiFi 802.11b/g Graphic: Intel UMA Memory: 512MB, DDR2-400 Storage: 4, 8, and 16GB Flash Webcam: 300K pixel video camer...

It's no secret I despise the Nokia 770. That's why I didn't rush right out earlier this year and spend another $400 on the N800, just 10 months after I'd spent my initial $380 on the 770, and after countless hours working with the 770 and complaining about what was wrong. Hey. Everybody needs a hobby, right? Well, in perusing the LinuxDevices site I came across an article detailing how the 770 had dropped down to $140 on buy.com and shop.com. Sure enough, I went looking on buy.com and found it for $139 brand new and still in the box. I thought it was cheap enough to get a spare. But when I chatted with my friend Matt about buying a spare, he asked "Why?" Even Matt, who owns one and is more hard-core geek than I am about these things, smiled and said it wasn't worth the money, even at that low price. Matt's advice was like divine guidance, and because of Matt I'm $140 dollars richer. Bless you, Matt. Of interest to me were the snarky comments about...

No, I didn't buy an iPhone, but it's not because I don't want to. Oh, how I so want to. The reason I won't buy an iPhone is that T-Mobile is my provider, not AT&T, and T-Mobile doesn't sell the iPhone, at least not in America . And I'm so very happy T-Mobile is my provider. I was once an AT&T Wireless customer - back in 1996. Back when every minute was charged, and roaming fees would eat you up alive. And service was absolutely abominable ( and it looks like it still is ). After a year of very costly and very bad service (in which one monthly bill ran over $300 in 1996 dollars), I ended my contract with AT&T in 1997. It was the start of a nine-year fight to get away from them completely. AT&T decided I owed them another $127 because I ended my 12-month contract after 12 months. I wrote them a letter saying I did not, and why. Nothing came of it, and I thought it was at an end. I was wrong. AT&T never forgot, even though through the years I ha...