November 2009 – Eclecticism

Links for November 26th through November 30th

December 23, 2019November 30, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Sometime between November 26th and November 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

From the Archives, the Chaos of the WTO: "Ten years ago this week, Seattle was thrust into the international spotlight in a way that most people did not anticipate. Tens of thousands of protesters descended on our normally quiet corner of the United States. They brought with them their grievances and frustrations with the way our world was headed in 1999. Some of these [photos] have never been published before."
Cliff Mass Weather Blog: An Amazing Lightning Story: "Once in a while, I hear some amazing weather stories. Imagine being hit by lightning while driving. Instant destruction of the car's electronics, with the a window blowing out due the blast? Here is a true story shared by Judy Lew–she described it so well, I thought I would leave her own words, slightly abridged. And some pictures she shared. She sounds like the kind of person you would like to have around in an emergency! This lightning hit occurred on the 520 bridge in Seattle during commute time. This story illustrates how safe it is to be in a car during an electrical storm, since the current will pass around you."
Patrick Stewart: the legacy of domestic violence: As a child, the actor regularly saw his father hit his mother. Here he describes how the horrors of his childhood remained with him in his adult life
Panasonic discontinuing Technics 1200 turntables?: The rumours appear to originate from a New Zealand DJ shop called DMC World, which says on its product page: "Panasonic (the manufacturer of Technics) have announced that production of the world famous Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210 DJ turntables will stop at the end of February 2010". The turntables have been around for more than 35 years, and are featured in the London museum of Science and Technology as an important step in how music has been played and presented over the last century. Their popularity has ensued due to their tank-like construction, high torque and effective insulation from acoustic feedback.
On Twilight: What do you see in him?: Domestic violence is not romantic, and I don't care how much you say she started it, you don't hit your girlfriend. EVER. If the other women in your tribe had the sense that God gave mayonnaise, wolf boy would be lucky to only go to jail. Wait– there don't appear to be any other women in the tribe. sigh And this movie is the one that made $140 million bucks in one weekend. Bigger than Dark Knight. Maybe it's just that I'm older and (hopefully) wiser than the characters and thus out of this movie's target demographic, or maybe I'm a humorless feminist, but knowing that zillions of girls are seeing this getting the idea that a seriously unhealthy relationship is somehow the equivalent of true love — that is profoundly disturbing. Far scarier than a werewolf.

Facebook ‘Dislike’ Button Suspicion

December 23, 2019November 25, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

I just got an invite to a Facebook group titled “DISLIKE BUTTON is here – ADD it now!”. After looking this group over, I have very strong suspicious about it, and my first impulse is to recommend that everyone ignore it.

First: Facebook still isn’t adding a ‘dislike’ button. This is a third-party software hack, and has nothing to do with Facebook. Admittedly, the group does admit this on their info tab — but placed so far down the page that most people will never see it. This is shady.

Second: The instructions on how to add the dislike button have very little to do with adding a dislike button, and everything to do with getting as many people as possible to look at the group. Out of five ‘installation’ steps, only one — the last one — has anything to do with installing the button. The other four are just about spamming the group out to everyone on your friends list. This is shady.

Third: The dislike button itself is a Firefox browser add-on, and will not work for anyone using Internet Explorer, Safari, or any other browser. This is not mentioned anywhere on the dislike button group page. This is shady. Also, because they stress that you have to invite all your friends to the group before adding the button, many people will not realize that the button will not work for them until after they’ve already spammed all their friends. This is doubly shady.

Now, I don’t know what the dislike button Firefox add-on actually does or does not do once it’s installed on someone’s computer. However, given that they’re being sneaky about the entire process, and seem more concerned with getting their software on as many computers as possible, this doesn’t look good to me.

If you get an invite to the dislike button group, I strongly suggest ignoring it. if you use Firefox and have already installed the Firefox addon, I strongly suggest removing it. I don’t know that it’s bad, but from what I can see, I strongly doubt that it’s good.

No More Mercury for Me

December 24, 2019November 21, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

WARNING: I’m opening up a big ol’ can o’ worms here. It’s entirely possible that some of you who see this may be annoyed, upset, or personally offended by what I have to say. This rant isn’t specifically aimed at any of you personally — but I can’t claim that it’s not aimed at many of you in the aggregate. For that, you have my apologies in advance.

The last two times I’ve gone out clubbing, I’ve split my time between Vogue Night and The Mercury, as I like both clubs and have friends at both places that I like to see when I make it out of the house. I’ve bounced around on the dance floors, had fun seeing and flirting with friends, and generally had a good ol’ time.

I’ve then spent the next week or so feeling like crap, coughing up crap, and generally regretting immersing myself in secondhand smoke for two hours.

At this point, I have to face the fact that I just can’t do it anymore.

There’s a number of people I know who are definitely Merc people that I’m probably not going to see very often anymore (though, admittedly, I’m not the social butterfly that I once was, so technically there’s a lot of people I don’t see very often anymore…but there’s this subset that I’ll be seeing even less). That’s a bummer, ‘cause I like a lot of you, and as my current school and personal life schedules don’t leave me much time for socialization, my (roughly) monthly club nights are my best chance to see people.

What’s more frustrating, though, is that the Merc knows that there are people out there like me, who’d like to come to the Merc more often (or at all), but can’t handle the smoke. They’ve tried to support us in the past, with special non-smoking event nights, and for a while they even tried monthly smoke-free Saturdays. The result? No support (or, at least, not enough support to make it fiscally feasible). Apparently, the smokers are so wedded to the concept of being able to smoke indoors that, when faced with a non-smoking night, they won’t go rather than take smoke breaks outside, as they do in virtually every other public situation they go to. So, the Merc does what it has to do, and sticks with the formula that brings in the most business, so that they can stay afloat.

It’s disappointing to me that enough of the Merc’s supporters have made it clear that they will only support the Merc as long as they can smoke that the Merc cannot realistically hold smoke-free nights on a regular basis. I have to admit to a certain amount of curiosity about what that segment of the Merc’s regulars do on those non-smoking nights. Do they simply sit at home, puffing merrily away? Or are they so hypocritical as to go somewhere else entirely, at which point they have to do the same thing as they would be doing had they gone to the Merc that night: going outside for their smoke breaks? At that point, they’re merely withholding their business from the Merc out of petty spite, and that’s just sad, especially if they love and want to support the Merc as much as they might claim on any other night.

(I have a vague belief that the Thursday(?) night Lucifer’s Lounge is smoke-free until midnight, and from what I understand, it gets decent attendance. However, I’m not in the small subset of people that have the ability to go out clubbing on a weeknight. So, while I thoroughly support this, it’s not something that I can take advantage of.)

Understand, I’m not angry at or disappointed in the Merc in any way. They’ve managed to find a very useful loophole and set of circumstances that allows them to cater to a segment of the population that no other club can do, and that’s something I support. I enjoy the Merc, its clientele, its music, its employees, and even its figurative atmosphere — it’s only the literal atmosphere that causes issues for me.

As a former smoker, I never wanted to be one of “those” self-righteous ex-smokers. However, sometimes, even the most high-minded of us can give into temptation…and after having this rant bounce around in my head for the past week, it was time for me to give in.

Links for November 12th through November 19th

December 23, 2019November 19, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Sometime between November 12th and November 19th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

Official Google Blog: Finding the laws that govern us: Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.
The History of the Internet in a Nutshell: If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you spend a fair amount of time online. However, considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start? Here’s a brief history of the Internet, including important dates, people, projects, sites, and other information that should give you at least a partial picture of what this thing we call the Internet really is, and where it came from.
It’s true: all the taken men are best: Women: do you have a man? If you do, better beware. Chances are that some lone female has her eye on him. A new study provides evidence for what many have long suspected: that single women are much keener on pursuing a man who's already taken than a singleton. "The single women really, really liked the guy when he was taken," says Melissa Burkley of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, who conducted the "mate-poaching" study with her colleague Jessica Parker.
Meep! Nonsense Word Gets Students in Hot Water: "Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said he first heard students meep about a year ago during a class screening of a television show. 'Something happened and one of them said 'Meep,'' he said. 'And then they all started doing it.' The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn't really mean anything. 'It's almost like they look at you like it's a silly question,' he said. But meeping doesn't seem to be funny to Danvers High School Principal Thomas Murray, who threatened to suspend students caught meeping in school." Wow, dumb (the principal, not the kids). Also, lots of fun silliness and stories of teenage silliness in the Metafilter post about this article.
Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal: "The original Mandelbrot is an amazing object that has captured the public's imagination for 30 years with its cascading patterns and hypnotically colourful detail. It's known as a 'fractal' – a type of shape that yields (sometimes elaborate) detail forever, no matter how far you 'zoom' into it (think of the trunk of a tree sprouting branches, which in turn split off into smaller branches, which themselves yield twigs etc.). It's found by following a relatively simple math formula. But in the end, it's still only 2D and flat – there's no depth, shadows, perspective, or light sourcing. What we have featured in this article is a potential 3D version of the same fractal." I don't get the math in all of this, but there are some gorgeous pictures. A lot of them look to me like perfect sets for the home planet of Giger's Alien.

Links for November 5th through November 12th

December 23, 2019November 12, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Sometime between November 5th and November 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

Cyoa: "Outside of the realm of task-oriented books, this sort of hopscotch across the contents is a rarity. And the CYOA books are actually not exceptions in this respect, for they too are books that perform a task. But rather than being a definition retrieval system or associative datastore, their interactive function is to create a gameworld for the reader. This is part of the wonder of these books — they took a pre-existing set of interface conventions designed for utilitarian search tasks and mapped a new activity onto it. They were effectively a new kind of software application for the oldest information-display platform we have."
Bruji’s Pocketpedia is Back!: "We're very excited to announce that Pocketpedia2 has passed its App Store review and is available once more for download through the iTunes Store."
Djay » Spin – the All-in-One Controller for Djay: "Spin is the perfect all-in-one hardware solution to control djay, allowing anyone to mix, scratch, and play music as a DJ would right at your fingertips. Whether you are a beginner or a professional artist, Spin offers everything you need to be a DJ with your Mac. Start DJing today with Spin and experience what it's like to create your own mix for podcasts, slide shows, house parties and even bigger venues."
The Jobless Rate for People Like You – Interactive Graphic: Fascinating, if not entirely surprising, breakdown of how the unemployment rate varies within particular demographics.
In Which a Fairly Major Secret Is Made Secret No More: "Back in the old days, before Twitter exploded into the phenomenon that it is now, I got a message from Greg Grunberg. Greg plays Matt Parkman on Heroes (this information, which most of you don't need, is provided as a public service to the seven of you who do), and has been in every JJ Abrams project since JJ started making movies in the pre-old days. Greg and I traded several messages about a bunch of different things, and then he sent me a private message that said something like, 'JJ needs voice actors for Star Trek. Would you be interested in doing that?'"

Windows 7 + Digital River = Headaches

December 23, 2019November 6, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Yet another item in the “why I’m a Mac user” file, and the “we’re never buying another Windows-based PC” file.*

Back on September 18th, I bookmarked an article detailing a special program Microsoft had set up for college students, offering the Windows 7 upgrade for $29 dollars. While I’m definitely a Mac user, we do have Hermie, our PC laptop, and this seemed like a reasonable deal. I went to the website, put in my college e-mail address, and got the process started, placing an order for the digital download and paying the extra $13 for a physical installation DVD to be set via snailmail.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before things started to go all pear-shaped. The following is the text of a support request I sent to Digital River, the company handling the digital sales and distribution for the program, through their website:

Selected Reasons: Order question – I received an error message.

Shopper Email: [me]@cwu.edu

Shopper Comments: Store error?

I just had what appears to be a catastrophic error when attempting to place my order for the $29 Windows 7 special student price. On my first attempt, I made it through to the final ‘checkout’ button, when the store stalled for a minute or two, then came back with an error message (unfortunately, I didn’t save the message, so I can’t relate exactly what it was).

When I reloaded the store and again attempted to place my order, I am now being told that I am not eligible for this upgrade, even though the initial check of my e-mail address indicated that I was, and allowed me to place the order (until the error message appeared).

At this point, I’m not sure if my order has been placed or not. I’ve not yet received any sort of e-mail confirmation, which seems to indicate that my order does not exist, but the ‘ineligible’ error message might mean that the system thinks I have placed an order, and is preventing me from placing a second order.

Additionally, I’ve been receiving the following error from the webserver while attempting to submit this error report:

Access Denied

You don’t have permission to access "http://drh.img.digitalriver.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet" on this server.

Reference #18.64d32d0.1253551495.12f2e3d

This forced me to find this customer service page on the main Digital River website, rather than being able to use the customer service page on the Windows 7 US Online Store.

Any assistance, including confirmation of whether or not my order has

actually been placed, would be greatly appreciated.

Three days later, on September 22nd, I got the following response:

Thank you for contacting the Windows 7 Offer online store.

We show that the payment for order number XXXXX has been received and is awaiting clearance through the bank. This process may take up to 14 days from the date payment was received. Once the payment has cleared, you will be notified via email. If you purchased a digital product, it will become available for download after the funds have cleared.

Order Number : XXXXX

Sincerely,

Mark V.

Windows 7 Offer online store

Customer Service

webhelp.v4@digitalriver.com

Email ID: 11915177

Time passes…

I never did get any e-mail confirmation of my order, and the payment took a lot longer than 14 days. Yesterday I checked my bank accounts online, and saw that the charge from Digital River had finally gone through on October 27th, more than a month after I had placed the order. Still, at least that was confirmation that they had received and processed my order. I went to the Digital River site, plugged in my order number, and was finally able to download the Windows 7 installation.

So, yesterday morning, I get the upgrade process started. The initial download was a small, 346k installation manager. I open that, and it begins the two-hour process of downloading the full Windows 7 installation package.

Two hours later, it’s ready to go. I run the installer, it chews on things for a while, checks for online updates, chews on things a little longer, and then tells me that I need to complete two steps before proceeding: I must uninstall iTunes, and restart Hermie because of some system updates the installer had changed. Okay, fine. iTunes goes away, and I restart Hermie.

Once Hermie restarts…um, well, now what? The installation process didn’t automatically restart. There’s no standalone installer that I can see, either on my desktop or in my Downloads folder. Odd. Maybe it’s all handled through that initial little download manager? I open that up, and a few minutes later, I’m watching the download counter slowly crawl through another two hour download process, as apparently whatever it downloaded the first time disappeared during the restart process. At this point, I have to head off to school, so I just let a few choice words fly and wander off, letting the machine do its thing.

That night, I come home from school. The download is finished, so I start the installation process again. This time the installer seems happy, and proceeds chug away, after warning me that the process will take “a few hours.” A few hours indeed — two hours later, it’s still installing, and I go to bed.

Which brings us up to this morning. When I check Hermie, it looks like the install has gone swimmingly, and Windows is happily sitting and waiting, asking me to type my Windows product key. “You can find your Windows product key on a label included with the package that came with your copy of Windows. The label might also be on your computer case.”

Hm. Well, since this was a digital download, I don’t have a package. Maybe, as this was a digital download, they just need the old Vista product key? I dig out Hermie’s box, find the Vista product key, type it in…no go. Okay, so apparently, I’m actually supposed to have a Windows 7 product key somewhere. Not really surprising, but I’m more than a little curious as to where it might be.

Back to Digital River’s site. I poke around the customer service pages and find out that the product key was supposed to be e-mailed to me. Hey, I’ll bet that that was part of the e-mail that I never got because the website crashed! Oh, goodie.

So, the following two e-mail messages go off to Digital River, this time directly to “Mark” at the e-mail address that replied to my first message:

Hi Mark —

On or about September 20th or 21st, I submitted a support request through Digital River’s main site regarding my issues ordering the special $29 student price edition of the Windows 7 upgrade. You replied to me on the 22nd, letting me know that despite my problems with the website, my order had been received and was merely awaiting clearance through my bank. I’ve included the discussion thread with my original request and your response below.

The good news is that the order did finally go through — I saw the entry on my bank statement yesterday, and was able to log in and download the Windows 7 installer. I let the installer run overnight, and everything seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, the bad news is that (I assume) because of the issues with the website when I originally placed my order, I never received an e-mail confirmation or receipt for my order. And, of course, it is this e-mail confirmation that contains the Windows 7 Product Key necessary to complete the install and activate Windows. At the moment, I have a computer that has a legally purchased and installed copy of Windows 7, but is of no more use than a doorstop because of the lack of a product key.

I’ve tried every avenue I can think of to find the key on the Digital River website. While I can log in and view my Order Details page, which verifies my order number, date, status, and billing and shipping addresses, that page does not display my product key. It does offer a helpful-looking button titled “View Invoice”, however, clicking on that, rather than showing me my invoice, instead sends me to the main Registration page on the site that asks for my educational institution e-mail address to verify that I’m eligible for the program.

I’ve paid for the software, the money has been deducted from my account, I’ve installed the software, and my computer is now useless due to some bug in the Digital River system. Please have someone find my invoice or receipt and send me my product key so I can use the software I’ve purchased…and my computer.

An addendum to the attached message that I sent approximately 40 minutes ago:

I have just checked my physical e-mail box, and though the charge from Digital River was deducted from my bank account on Oct. 27th (incidentally, more than a month after I initially placed the order), I have not yet received the physical DVD that I ordered (which I’m hoping would also have the product activation key as part of the package, though at this point, I’m less than optimistic). Do you have any idea when my installation DVD shipped, the expected shipping time, or (best case scenario) a tracking number?

In addition to sending the e-mail off, I also decided to see if I could call Digital River and actually speak to a customer support representative. Of course, Digital River doesn’t have a customer support phone number anywhere on their site that I can easily find, so I turn to Google…and boy, was that an education. Searching for ‘digital river customer service phone number‘ brings up a whole lot of reasons not to trust ordering anything from Digital River — including this battle from 2001, indicating that in eight years, they still haven’t managed to figure out their process — something that I wish I’d known before starting this whole process.

I do find a phone number for Digital River customer service listed on this customer service contact page from an entirely different company. Calling that number just gets me a recorded message from Digital River telling me that the number is no longer in service…but at least they are kind enough to give me another number to call.

For the record: as of November 6th, 2009, Digital River’s customer service phone number is (952) 253-1234.

So, at 7:57 a.m., I call. I speak to a polite young Indian lady who tells me her name is “Jay,” who checks and verifies my order, and tells me that I should get an email at my CWU email address in “about fifteen to twenty minutes” with my product key. The whole phone call takes all of about five minutes, so some small kudos to Digital River on that score: once you can find someone, they’re relatively polite and efficient. I thank her, and start writing this blog post. It’s now 8:52 a.m., long past the “fifteen to twenty minute” window that I was given, and no email has arrived yet. Yeah, any points Digital River got from their phone etiquette have been quite handily counteracted.

And that’s where the matter stands right now. I’m lucky in that Hermie is a backup machine, not a primary for either myself or Prairie, so it’s not catastrophic that it’s currently out of commission. I’ll keep fighting with Digital River, but if this goes on for more than another day or so with no product key, no physical installation DVD (with product key), and an inoperative computer, then I’ll be using the backup install DVD that came with Hermie to go back to Vista and start arguing for a refund instead.

What a completely crappy experience. Thanks, Digital River, and thanks, Microsoft, for choosing such a stellar business partner.

Update: After waiting for a full hour after the stated 20-minute window, I called back and spoke to another representative. This time, I had him send the email to my Gmail account, and kept him on the phone until it appeared. When it did appear, the email was very helpful in explaining how to download and install the Windows 7 upgrade…but said absolutely nothing about the product key. I explained this to the representative, even narrating exactly what happened when I followed the link in the email he had just sent me, until it finally sank in that yes, I had downloaded Windows 7, and yes, I had installed it, and yes, I still needed the product key!

Finally, he admitted that there seemed to be something going wrong, and read me my product key, character by character. Once again making sure to keep him on the phone, I read the product key back to him as I entered it in…and, finally, success! The box blinked away, and Windows 7 finally finished installing.

So, an eventual acceptable ending. But wow. What an incredible amount of frustration to get there. Any bets on whether that physical installation DVD ever shows up?

* A quick aside to the zealots: yes, I’m perfectly aware that this post details an issue primarily with Digital River, and only slightly with Microsoft. However, as I’ve never had a customer service experience quite this frustrating with Apple or an Apple-related company, and as I wouldn’t be having this experience were it not for attempting to upgrade a Windows-based PC, the Microsoft/non-Apple-PC side of things ends up being the target of my ire. Perhaps it’s not entirely fair, but that’s just how it is.

Links for October 29th through November 2nd

December 23, 2019November 2, 2009 by Michael Hanscom

Sometime between October 29th and November 2nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

Meet Stephen King’S Gore Specialist: "King first tapped the Dartmouth-trained practitioner to help him fact-check the terrifying supervirus he'd conceived for The Stand. King knows better than anyone the golden rule for horror and sci-fi: Make it as real as possible. In Dome (out in November), King serves up generous portions of materials science, nuclear physics, and medicine. And that's where Dorr comes in. He's the geek behind the geek."
xkcd: Movie Narrative Charts: "These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time." The Lord of the Rings box is the most impressive; also done for Star Wars (original trilogy), Jurassic Park, Primer, and 12 Angry Men.
Obamas give out treats, fruit to White House trick-or-treaters: "This wasn't the first-ever Halloween event at the White House — Tricia Nixon hosted underprivileged children for the holiday, the Fords and Carters welcomed trick-or-treaters from charitable organizations like UNICEF — but it might have been the biggest. Thousands of 5- to 14-year-olds and their families paraded through the crescent-shaped driveway." This is really cool. More and more, the Obamas just seem like really nice people.
27-Inch iMacs Reported to Have Flash Playback Issues: "If you were contemplating buying one of those shiny new 27-inch iMacs, maybe don't pull the trigger just yet: according to Engadget, many proud new owners of the computer have become annoyed new owners, reporting pronounced problems in particular with Flash playback." I'm not having this problem myself (knock on wood), but it might be worth keeping an eye out to see how this progresses.
An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All: "…there is no credible evidence to indicate that [the claim that vaccines harm children] is true. None. Twelve epidemiological studies have found no data that links the MMR vaccine to autism; six studies have found no trace of an association between thimerosal and autism, and three other studies have found no indication that thimerosal causes even subtle neurological problems. The so-called epidemic, researchers assert, is the result of improved diagnosis, which has identified as autistic many kids who once might have been labeled mentally retarded or just plain slow. In fact, the growing body of science indicates that the autistic spectrum…may largely be genetic in origin. […] But that hasn’t stopped as many as one in four Americans from believing vaccines can poison kids, according to a 2008 survey."
Jan. 1984: How critics reviewed the Mac: John C. Dvorak, 19 Feb. 1984: "The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the 'why' out of the equation — as in 'why would I want this?' The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don't want one of these newfangled devices."