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musings:tech:misc:start

Miscellany

Everything that doesn't fit under another category lives here.

Articles in this section

  • No, Comcast. Just...no.plugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigNo, Comcast. Just...no.

    This may come as a huge shock to you, but I don’t like Comcast very much. I never had much of a problem with Comcast until now, surprisingly enough. I mean, they are consistently rated The Worst Company in America by The Consumerist. I had Comcast twice in the past – once in Indiana when I lived in Lafayette, and once in Virginia when I lived in Alexandria City. Until I moved to Washington state last month, we had Cox, and they were amazing. We got free bandwidth upgrade…
  • DriverGuide.com’s Not-so-surprising Scammy Tacticsplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigDriverGuide.com’s Not-so-surprising Scammy Tactics

    PCMatic's driver databaseMicrosoft's searchable Windows Update Catalog

    I recently found myself in need of a driver for Mac OS 9. Since the hardware I was using was ancient and from a now-defunct company and OS 9 is equally ancient, this task was much easier Googled than actually completed.
  • The cake really is a lie…at least for Flickr users.plugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe cake really is a lie…at least for Flickr users.

    I hate to use a cliché, but you really can’t have your cake and eat it too.

    I logged in to Flickr yesterday rather innocently – I was updating some information on my Facebook profile and couldn’t remember exactly when I moved out of my first apartment in Indianapolis, many moons ago. I opened a new tab in my browser, navigated to Flickr, and – holy crap! A new site design! And what’s this about Pro accounts? I have a Pro account and have for …
  • Reconsidering the GPLplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigReconsidering the GPL

    modified version of GNU Affero

    An awful lot of software these days is released open-source, under various licenses. Gnu GPL is a popular one, in its various iterations. It’s a pretty great idea – software is released for free, the source code is made available to anyone who wants to take the time to compile it, people get access to useful applications without paying exorbitant license fees, and everyone wins. The really big projects like Ubuntu and Firefox get donatio…
  • The many functions of useless hard drives...plugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe many functions of useless hard drives...

    I’m a bit of a packrat. When something electronic finally craps out, I tend to keep it around, just in case. Dead hard drives fall into this category, at least for me.

    If you’ve never taken apart a hard drive, you should. The platters are unbelievably reflective, since they’ve never been touched by anything before being installed in the drive’s casing. I have a large collection of hard drive platters at the moment, some of which have interesting rad…
  • The Changing Landscape of Personal Computingplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Changing Landscape of Personal Computing

    I’ll try not to give too much commentary on the way Apple does things, but the company has certainly made its mark in how we view personal technology and computing in 2012. Just as the iPod revolutionized portable media players and the iPhone made waves in the smartphone world, the iPad changed how we look at the way we access our media, data, social networks, and the Internet as a whole.
  • In defense of the independent option: shattering the bipartisan mythplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigIn defense of the independent option: shattering the bipartisan myth

    I probably got you going there for a minute, didn’t I? Don’t worry, this isn’t a political dissertation or anything. I’m talking about mobile operating systems. I mean, face it – we’re down to only two options for smartphones, and it’s really becoming a problem.