Category Archives: tech

General technology issues

donturn.com is back online

As you may or may not have noticed, donturn.com was down for almost 72 hours. My hosting provider, dr2.net who became mesopia.com and is now netbunch.com seemed to have a little trouble (well, more than a little if you ask me) updating my domain name and then getting my account back online. I’ve been living with online hosting for about a decade and I have to say that this was the most frustrating time I’ve ever had trying to get something fixed.

I am pretty certain that all the people at netbunch are nice, hard working people but they have a series of problems in their systems that are not very customer-centric. No live phone support (you can call and leave a message), nor will they call you back. There is a live chat feature on their web site (which is a great idea), but doesn’t seem to be open during the times of day they claim it will be. Also, despite getting a ticket number when you send in an email, the feedback loop is either slow or a null op (which I’ll give them the benefit of my doubt in that they aren’t responding because they’re trying to hurry up and fix my problem?).

To make a multi-paragraph story short(er) – I think it would be wise to look around for another hosting provider in case I have more trouble. Do you have a recommendation? Ideally, it would be someone that makes hosting WordPress easy, uses something like the cPanel interface to coordinate things, provides log analysis support (like urchin), lets me coordinate multiple domains (and their blogs) from one account name (and purchase order) and has phone support (I’d even pay a fee if I really needed real-time feedback in a pinch). In my dream world, they’d also provide VPN or maybe just SSL POP and SSL IMAP too.

Much thanks.

Trusted Computing is anything but AND loses my business

Cory Doctorow, over at boingboing links to a potential scoop about Apple to add Trusted Computing to the new kernel from a slashdot posting and commentary that references www.osx86.classicbeta.com (which I don’t see a story about on the main page).

Like, Cory – I’ve been an on-off Macintosh user for a long time (1985 for me, but Cory since 1979? you must have been 6 year old hacking on that Apple II!). If Apple Computer Inc. adds “trusted” computing, even in iTunes (wait, it’s not already in iTunes?), or in any other part of the OS, it would push me away from from the Macintosh as a computing platform I would use or recommend. I have been running GNU/Linux (but I usually just say “Linux” or in this case Ubuntu) on a PC/Intel machine now and it is pretty respectable and easy to use. I suspect many people are moving towards Linux-based systems and this would surely push them (or their companies) over the edge.

I would miss a few applications on the Mac, such as Salling Clicker, NetNewsWire and Quicksilver, but that’s a sacrifice I’d make to know that I can use my data whenever and in whatever application I like. I encourage these software developers to make their case known to Apple that choosing to enable a DRM system inside the OS (at the kernel level even) would impact the sales of their applications.

I also happen to work for a place that buys a huge number of Macs (let’s say 10,000 a year as a guess) and I would do my best to persuade them to stop purchasing all Apple equipment. I encourage anyone else with a dog in this fight to make a declaration about this too.

If I were the rabble-rousing, organizing type – I would recommend someone start an online petition to communicate mine (and your) opinions on trusted computing to Apple. Steve Jobs has managed to reinvograte Apple in the past few years, but I can think of nothing that would kill the Macintosh buzz and cachet quicker than locking owners out of their own data.

Update: It looks like myself and others didn’t have the whole story (but who does?) in that there do not seem to be any current plans to enable this technology into the core of the Mac OS. Some have mentioned that it could be used to ensure that the intel-flavored OS will only run on Apple hardware. As an Apple Computer, Inc. shareholder I can understand this, as a Macintosh user I do not want this as an extra thing to have to worry about when using the system, as a OS X developer I do not want this as an extra set of functions or libraries to have to work with or be concerned in conflicting with.

I do have to ask myself, is there any situation or clever use of “Trusted” Computing or DRM that is actually useful for a user? One comes to mind – version control – but there are a number of non-restrictive ways to solve that problem as we know. Let’s discuss it.

The Art of Computer Programming, not online at Amazon

Oddly enough, the ultimate CS classic – Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1 (or any of the other volumes) aren’t available via Amazon’s “Look inside this Book” feature.

I thought it would be a quick way to look up just one thing when I don’t have the book at hand, but amazon.com has missed scanning and OCR-ing this one. Even more strangeness – a google search reveals a product search result (i.e. an ad) for the book at Wal-mart.com.

Am I the only person who cares about this book any longer?

Feed Your Reader – auto subscribe with NetNewsWire

Thanks to an email from Brent Simmons, the Firefox extension Feed Your Reader lets you auto-subscribe to a feed from Firefox to NetNewsWire.

Just install Feed Your Reader and select the “Feed Protocol” option in the extension’s one and only configuration option. Then right click (or hold-click) and select “Subscribe to This Page”. You’ll be prompted by Firefox to choose an application to work with the “feed://” protocol. Just find NetNewsWire and you’re all set.

The New New Portal

The ingenuity of various independent developers in conjuction with simple scripting, open source databases and XML data formats such as RSS are making old school (1994-1997) portals nearly obsolete. Take this great idea that annotates a prototypical New York Times front page with links to related blog posts (and other feeds) : The Annotated NY Times – About

Throw in Bloglines with its easy to use, Web-based interface for any number of RSS feeds and very soon, a few personal tweaks with greasemonkey, not to mention integrating your own personal blogosphere view using Technorati tags or even more personally oriented, pluck with its client interface/information dashboard++ and you can kiss your portal application providers goodbye.

ORACLE’s recent buyout of Peoplesoft may not be so smart in the long, long run when every business unit, not to mention employee, can crank out structured data feeds, tweak simple logic to act on other’s sources and keep up to date with everything in the organiztion with just a few clicks on everyone’s favorite orange button: .

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities?

Maybe not all 46 are useful, and some are obvious, but these Windows apps look pretty good if you need them or didn’t even know there was an application that did some of these things. And hey, they’re supposedly free: The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities.

Note that these are classified as free, but that’s not explained in depth. While some are open source, the provenance of many of them are either unknown or not stated by the list makers.