Early Reviews of Longhorn from the Dead Language Department…
By Brian | July 25, 2005
Apparently, those who speak ancient Sanskrit think the new version of Windows is, well, er….crap.
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Real-time London Tube Disruption Map
By Brian | July 22, 2005
For those who are interested/affected, the London Tube has a map online that shows disruption status in real-time.
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Googling at the moon…
By Brian | July 20, 2005
Google has created a site based on their mapping tool in honor of the anniversary of the first moon landing (July 20, 1969).
If you zoom all the way in, you’ll see some views of the moon’s surface that have never been seen before…
Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »
Someone build me one of these, please…
By Brian | July 19, 2005
It just occurred to me that someone has to make a scanner that’s built right into a monitor. The user would put the paper he/she was scanning right up on the screen, push a button on the monitor frame, and Whammo – the image appears on the screen. It’d be like high tech iron-on’s.
Any engineers out there have some time on their hands? Get on it!
Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »
What Prevents Crime?
By Brian | July 14, 2005
Jeff Porten, guestblogger on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog this month, posted this about the security cameras in London and their inability to stop the London bombing, touching off an interesting discussion in the comments thread about security versus privacy.
This got me thinking: What prevents crime? Local, State, and Federal governments all around the world have tried various strategies, and many megabytes have been archived over whether or not those strategies are effective and/or worth it. I think it’s best broken down this way:
What Prevents Crime?
Social Convention Prevents Crime
This is the easy one. Most of us are not criminals. Period. (Note to all the bigots of the world: replace “of us” with your least favorite group and the sentence still rings true. Some examples: Most Arabs are not criminals. Most Muslims are not criminals. Most Jews are not criminals. See how easy it is? Fun for the whole family…) At any rate, the fact remains that 99.999% of the people in the world wouldn’t dream of killing another human being, even if they were guaranteed they could get away with it. Heck – a significant percentage of us would stop at a red light on a rural road at 2AM, even if we could see with our own eyes that no one was coming for miles in both directions. Call it habit, call it conscience. Some even call it religion. Whatever you call it, the fact remains that most of us are good people.
So that leaves us with the criminals.
Law Enforcement Prevents Crime
Crooks hate being watched, plain and simple. The New York Police Department’s uniformed headcount increased 42 percent to 40,300 between 1992 and 2000 (that’s one officer for every 7 recorded crimes). In the same period, crime fell by 54 percent. In London, uniformed headcount dropped 10 percent over the same period (one officer for every 41 recorded crimes) and crime increased by 12 percent. [Source]. “John H”, a Whatever commenter, relates similar anecdotes about Chicago in recent years (no direct link – scroll down to Comment #9).
Skeptics will point to other factors that reduce crime (economic growth, community action programs, etc.) and point out horrible stories about crimes committed by cops, crimes that happened while police were on patrol, or crimes committed in the presence of surveillance equipment. While the other factors may also be at play (no one’s saying law enforcement is the only way to prevent crime), the stories are nothing more than anecdotes designed to cloud the big picture.
OK, here’s where it gets really sticky:
The Appearance of Law Enforcement Prevents Crime
If you’re cruising down the highway and a cop pulls up behind you, you slow down. The cruise control could be pegged at the speed limit, but when you see the police car in your rearview mirror, your foot hits the brake. That’s all well and good, but here’s the fascinating part: people also slow down if the cops just park one of their empty police cars on the side of the road. They slow down when they pass an electronic sign that displays their speed and asks them to slow down. They even slow down when they pass a sign that says “Speed monitored by helicopter.” In some cases, the suggestion that someone might be watching can be as powerful as someone actually being there.
Here’s a more haunting example: When the 9/11 hijackers met in Spain, they decided against attacking a nuclear facility in New York, because they assumed the airspace around it would be restricted, increasing the likelihood that the plane would be shot down before impact. [Source: 9/11 Commission Report, Page 245] It wasn’t the security that dissuaded them, it was the assumption that security would exist.
This is also the theory behind the random passenger checks at airports. Jeff slams the TSA in another post for letting loads of people through security with cigarette lighters, calling their security “just for show.” I would argue that this is precisely the point: the TSA can’t possibly hope to identify and confiscate every possible weapon a person may carry on the plane. But by making a very public display about confiscating nail clippers, cigarette lighters, scissors, etc., they hope to dissuade a criminal from attempting to board with a weapon, simply because that criminal might assume that he/she is likely to get caught. If this is indeed the case, missing a few lighters doesn’t matter at all. The “show” is helping to increase security every bit as much as the act itself.
A final thought: in the time between Jeff’s original post and today, the security cameras in London did in fact help the investigation. What now appears to be four suicide bombers were seen on camera meeting just before the attacks and then entering the various train stations, etc. Obviously, the idea that they were being watched didn’t dissuade these terrorists from acting. Hopefully, though, the fact that these guys were found and identified within 72 hours of the attacks makes the next terrorist scrap his plan.
Of course, if that’s the case, we’ll never know…
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Firefox To Get Its Own Google Toolbar
By Brian | July 10, 2005
For my Firefox friends, might I highly recommend The Google Toolbar, coming to your desktop soon!
Categories: Tech Talk | 3 Comments »
A Laser Printer for $45
By Brian | July 9, 2005
OK, call me old. Call me very, very old. But I remember the day when laser printers were only for offices, because they were too expensive.
Here’s one for $45.
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Help for the Tech Support Generation
By Brian | July 9, 2005
Fog Creek CoPilot is software that’s supposed to help resolve this problem:
“Click START”
“What?”
“Start. Click Start. It’s in the bottom left.”
“I have C – T – R – L in the bottom left.”
“The bottom left of your screen.”
“Oh. OK, I clicked it.”
“OK, now click RUN.”
“What?”
“On the menu that came up. Click RUN.”
“It’s not there.”
“What do you mean it’s not there?”
“It’s not there. I don’t have a RUN.”
“What do you see? Read me everything you see”
“Recycle Bin… My Computer… Anna Navratilova J P G…”
“No, on the menu.”
“What menu?”
“The menu that came up when you clicked start.”
“When I what?”
Basically, you and your dad/mom/uncle/aunt each go to their website & download an app, which acts as a kind of traffic cop for tech support. Both computers send information to their server, and it sends it back to the opposite party. That way, you can take control of your technically-challenged relative’s computer and fix the problem while they watch, without requiring a direct connection between the two machines.
Very cool idea. I see one problem with it, which is this:
“OK, you need to go to www.copilot.com”
“I need to go where?”
“Open your web browser”
“Wait – I’m getting my coat on”
“Why?”
“You said I had to go somewhere”
“No – you need to go to a website. Just sit down at the computer and open your web browser”
“Can I take my coat off?”
“Yes. Just open your web browser”
“What’s that?”
“Click on the fancy ‘e’ near the bottom of the screen – next to the ‘Start’ button”
“OK, I see that screen with my news headlines and stock quotes. And a naked picture of Anna Kornikova that says ‘Click here’ to win $1,000”
“Ugh. Close the picture of Anna and type in ‘www.copilot.com’ “
“OK, I did. It’s asking for my credit card number so it can credit me the $1,000”
“I thought I told you to close the picture”
“I thought I did. What does all of this have to do with my problem?”
“Nevermind…”
Categories: Tech Talk | 3 Comments »
Introducing the IBM PC
By Brian | July 4, 2005
Jeff Porten has posted a review of the first Macintosh computer. Fascinating reading, in a “look how far we’ve come” sort of way.
Ever being the one to seek balance in the world, here’s the first USENET post to review the IBM PC (according to Wikipedia).
Compare and contrast, folks…
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Google & Blogger – Perfect Together
By Brian | July 2, 2005
Remember the days when a gadget you had stopped working, and you had to ask everyone you know if they knew how to fix it, or stay on hold for hours with some tech support guy just so he could tell you he had no idea? It’s times like these I realize just what a blessing Google is in our lives. Here’s what happened:
I’m happily going along posting entries to my blog (you know, in case anyone suddenly decides to stop by and read them). All of the sudden, I notice that my posts aren’t indenting anymore (the body of the post is supposed to be indented 10 pixels from the title and the “posted by Brian” line at the bottom – it makes it easier to pick the posts out when scrolling down the screen). Anyway, it was working fine for weeks and had suddenly stopped.
(NOTE: Here’s where it gets all techie, geeky. You’ve been warned)
Into the template I went. The post body is defined by a class called “blogpost_text” which clearly specifies the 10 pixel indent. I have another style defined for quotes (“blogquote”), and I noticed that when I use it and then manually switch back to “blogpost_text”, then indent is there, so it’s not the style sheet that’s the problem.
So I checked View…Source… on the blog page itself. Turns out that Blogger is inserting this line in the HTML at the beginning of each post:
<div clear:both></div>
I couldn’t figure out why (it’s simply not in the template), so I turned to Google. I typed “blogger div clear both” into my Google toolbar, and two clicks later, I was here. It seems the folks at Blogger added the “div” command to take care of another problem they were having with image posting (I haven’t had that problem yet, so it’s either pretty obscure or my image needs are very basic). In any case, the link directs you to a simple 1-click setting to fix the problem.
I made the change and voila! I’m back in business. Total time to fix this daunting problem: 30 seconds.
Bravo, Google. Bravo.
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