I am currently working with a number of local community groups; my role is typically to get people using Web2.0 technologies to make us more efficient. This is surprisingly difficult.
One group I an involved in recently put on a en event. The event was proposed a couple months ago through an email message. There was a certain amount of discussion exchanged by email, Continue reading
I woke up this morning to see this on the screen:
Something has automatically installed itself into my Mozilla without my permission. What was it? I don’t know. The screen above does not actually say what was installed. It might be the Michelangelo virus for all I know. And there is nothing listed in the list of extensions. There is a list of plug-ins, so it might have been a plug in, but which one?
But I did not ask for anything to be installed. There was no little pop up window saying “About to install….are you sure?” I had no idea that something was being installed. That spells virus city.
Why am I so sensitive? Last Thursday I installed Firefox 3.0. On sunday my computer was infected with a virus that took over the screen saver. I attempted to remove it manually, including a number of removal tools, but in the end wiped the computer and re-installed windows. Not a fun way to spend a Sunday evening. I am pretty sure that source of the infection was Firefox, and having just installed Firefox 3, it makes me wonder if there is a security flaw in the new version.
So now I am running on a computer with almost nothing on it (it will be a few days before I get all my normal software installed). In this relatively sterile environment, I am finding pieces of software automatically installing themselves. Not good.
Kudos to the Mozilla folks for providing an alert saying that something happened, but how hard would it have been to include the NAME of the add-in in the alert? Real security would be to have a list of every extension to the software listed, where it came from, as well as the date and time that it was installed. Maybe even the signature on the code for verification.
I am probably overreacting to this, but given my recent experience, I am justifiably nervous. Hmmm, maybe that Google Chrome is starting to look a tiny bit more attaractive.
I needed to describe the reason that an Agile approach to software development works, and why it is not something that is isolated to the development team. I wrote up the following explanation. Maybe this will be helpful to you in explaining agile development to others. Continue reading
See my previous post on Web 2.1: How OpenID will rescue Web 2.0 where I wax lyrical on how great it will be when I can have a single ID and use it everywhere. Well, I still think it is a good idea, and I still think it is the right approach, but I am considerably more disappointed about the level of support. Continue reading
Will you be forced to pay royalties in order to watch your child’s performance on your TV at home? That videotape of your child’s band concert might be illegal, due to overzealous enforcement of copyright laws by the music industry. Motivated by greed, the music industry has simply gone too far.
Consider the case of Mike. He has two kids playing in the high school band: Tom and Nicole. Mike is a typical band booster: he volunteers on the music association board, he helps load and unload all the equipment at events, sometimes he even drives the truck. Continue reading
Yup, we never stop inventing new stuff here, and to prove it, check out the latest new product: Fujitsu Unveils Laptop Made of Corn. What will we think of next? 🙂
Also seen on inhabitat.com.
If you don’t have an HD TV yet, you are sure to have one soon. Somewhere I read 50% of households have a digital TV, and I suppose some large fraction of that will be HD. But here is the scam: eventually you are going to need an HDMI cable, and the electronics store knows that you are not going to think ahead. Funny thing: all the cables are so very expensive. Not anything like the TV, but often between $100 and $150 for a 3 to 6 foot piece of wire. If you are lucky, they may have a “discounted cable” for $85.
Why are they so expensive? There is no real reason. HDMI is a digital connection, and there is a certification standard. As long as the cable meets the standard, the picture should be exactly equivalent. If you look around, you can find an HDMI cable on the web for $6 to $8 with gold plated connectors and fully certified. These places have HDMI cables for “normal” prices:
What is going on? Simple psychology. Most consumers will forget to buy the cable, until they discover they need one, and it is 30 minutes to the opening kickoff of the superbowl. They know you are are going to focus on the main purchase: the 50 or so inches of gleaming glass and glow where you will shell out between $2K to $5K or more. “Would you like a cable with that?” they will say. What difference does $100 make in a purchase of this size? Who wants to take home a brand new TV, and not be able to turn it on to watch? Who wants to take home a brand new PlayStation or other high def DVD player, and then have to wait a week or more to be able to enjoy the full resolution? You are going to want the cable right then. The markup on these cable is in the 10x range if you buy from an electronics retailer.
I went (of course) to Fry’s to search for a better deal. In the TV department, they had the standard $85 cable on display. I looked they guy in the eye and pointed out that Fry’s is a discount store, and he said I could find a better deal in the electronic parts department. Over on the other side of the store, I found the rack where HDMI cables hang empty. After rummaging around on top of the overhead shelf, I found a package with a 6 foot cable for $25 that someone had probably stashed up there for possible recovery later. That was clearly the best deal I was going to get three days before Christmas.
The retailers know that they “have you” over the cable and that is why the prices are uniformly high. And, to be fair, none of them are going to sell more TV’s by lowering the prices of the cable. But it just plain bugs me that the price is so inflated.
Here is my recommendation: click on one of the links now (do it right now) and purchase an $8 cable and have it shipped to you the slowest, cheapest way. Eventually, probably in the next year, this is going to save you money. It might save you anywhere from $20 to $50. Either way, a $10 investment with a 2x to 5x return within a year is a good investment in anyone’s book. But the satisfaction of telling the saleman you don’t need the cable is priceless. Even if you don’t have an HD TV, and are not planning to get one in the next year. A you might be the guy (or gal) with a spare HDMI cable, 30 minutes before the superbowl game.
Links to similar articles: arstechnica, gizmodo, macrumors, searchwarp, cnet, playstation.
I have been discussing HDR photography with friends and colleagues for the past few weeks, but it seems what everyone needs is a really good example. I have published a bunch of HDR photos on my Flickr page. But the real question is where do you really need this. Since discovering this technique, I find my self looking for shots where the dynamic range is beyond that which my camera can handle. I set up these shots just to see how it will look. Continue reading
Comments sowed the seeds of doubt about whether HDR photography is worth the trouble. As a hobbiest I have not really spent much time manually manipulating RAW format pictures. My camera (Canon G6) has a 10 bit per pixel sensor, which gets then compressed to 8 bits per pixel in the JPG. That is potentially 10 f-stops (EV) of dynamic range. Somewhere I found a web page listing the G6 as having a luminosity range of 1:650, which is between 9 and 10 EV. I hear better cameras can get 10 to 11 EV. Maybe, as you say, that is enough. Clearly combining pictures taken +2 EV, and -2 EV could potentially potentially add 3 or 4, giving the total range around 13 or 14 EV. How do I know whether I need the extra range?
How important is this dynamic range, anyway? The human eye records an instantaneous dynamic range of 1:30,000, a range of 1:200,000 if you allow a couple of seconds for the iris adjust, and 1:1,000,000 if you wait 20 minutes for the eyes to adjust to darkness. All of these make the 1:1000 of a camera seem tiny. But how much do you really need? Continue reading
A few days ago I found out about High Dynamic Range (HDR) photographs. A short search on the web will bring you lots of information, but somehow I have been living just fine completely oblivious to HDR.
The threory behind HDR is that film (and digital cameras) have a particular dynamic range that they are sensitive to. Light intensity values that fall outside of this range, tend to get smashed together and “washed out”. You can see this easily if you take a picture of someone with the sky behind them, but set the exposure so that you can see their face. Continue reading
Thinking Matters 