(Blog)

My first inclination upon seeing a process whose description is ##Id_String2.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762## in my list of currently running processes is to think it’s some kind of virus, spyware, or some other malevolent piece of garbage. My first inclination would be wrong.

Bonjour

A quick Google search found that it’s part of Apple’s Bonjour service, which gets arbitrarily installed with iTunes, and apparently anything from Adobe these days. Bonjour is basically Apple’s version of zero configuration networking, and the service behind the ability of iTunes users to broadcast and share their playlists. That’s fine and all, but what is it doing on my PC?

After all, Windows already uses its own implementation of Zeroconf, so what’s the use of having a second? I don’t see Microsoft unloading a bunch of Windows services onto unsuspecting Mac users every time they install third-party software that has nothing to do with Microsoft. Thus, I don’t expect to find Apple’s services bundled with third-party software either.

Of course, I’m not especially surprised. These are the same people who pushed Safari on unsuspecting Windows iTunes users a few months back. At any rate, it was not an ordeal to simply right-click the offending process, stop it, and set it to “disabled”. Perhaps I’ll re-enable it the next time I actually need Bonjour (read: never).

I was just reading about the latest demo of Google’s Android mobile operating system. The Android Community site got an exclusive live preview of the latest version, and posted plenty of pictures and video, most importantly, this:

In a nut-shell, this system is already looking like it can do whatever the snazzy iPhone can dish out, with two key differences: it’s free, and it’s open. Where the Apple software, even with the new App Store and iPhone SDK, is crippled by being under Apple’s lock and key, Google Android will let developers do whatever they want, on their own terms.

Here is a dialog box I’m often greeted with in Adobe Dreamweaver while working with XHTML/CSS files that have linked graphics:

[name of file] has changed on the remote server since your last get or put operation. Putting the file may overwrite changes to the file. Do you wish to put the file anyway?

In the case that led me to write this, I had FTP’d the most current copy to the server using a separate FTP program; therefore, the server copy was the same as the PC copy. This is how I understood the dialog box:

Since you last put this file on the server, the server copy has changed. If you choose to put this file onto the server, the changed server copy will be overwritten with the PC copy you are putting there now. Is that OK with you?

I have no problem with that. Except, this is what actually happens:

Since you last put this file on the server, the server copy has changed. If you choose to put this file onto the server, despite telling you otherwise, I’m going to copy a previous version of the server copy over to your PC, overwriting your PC’s copy of the file and shitting up your whole day. Hope you made a backup—oh wait, I guess that was your backup. Ha ha! Fuck you! Adobe out!

Dreamweaver proceeded to take a previous cached version of the file (not even the most current version on the server) and send it to my PC, overwriting the most current version. Then, apparently, it took that now-old version and steamrolled the server’s current copy with that too, leaving me with old copies of the file on both PC and server. Whee.

This is kind of like being transported back in time in a time machine, except just one hour back in time, and without a way back to the present. On one hand, it’s pretty cool to have officially become a time-traveler. On another, thanks for nothing, badly worded dialog box.

At least I didn’t get a disease that would be easily curable in the present, but is incurable in the time where I was sent. Even if I had, I’m quite sure any disease that’s curable right now was equally curable an hour ago.

I think the 3D desktop concept is beginning to go too far. I was looking at this video today of the “BumpTop” 3D tablet PC type interface which mimics the way documents are “organized” in a real-world desktop. As pretty as the interface might be, it suffers from a fatal flaw: The cluttered real-life desktop is not a good organization method. (more…)

I wasn’t around in the Sixties and Seventies, but I’m pretty sure that mainstream recording artists and their fans weren’t too terribly preoccupied with reliving (and rehashing) music from the Forties or Fifties. They were too busy creating a generation of groundbreaking music to worry about that. So, why, since about the time “grunge” came and went from our popular psyche, have we been so damn preoccupied with re-recording classic musical styles of past generations? Is it because we’ve got easier access to music than we used to, better information, and so we are now better able to listen to and appreciate that music? Or is it because we can’t make music anymore?

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Years ago, networks began placing their network IDs as digital on-screen graphics, nicknamed “bugs”, small watermark logos that often appear in the lower right-hand corner of the television broadcast. These began as innocuous, only mildly obtrusive logo watermarks which popped up infrequently during broadcasts to remind viewers which network they were viewing. In an era before time-shifted set-top boxes and on-demand digital cable broadcasts, these little logos did provide some measure of benefit to viewers, allowing channel-surfers to know precisely what network they were watching in an instant. This was how these “bugs” became a Trojan horse for advertising.

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Parking lots are amongst the least aesthetic and most strictly functional of buildings, and they are by design not unlike the modern Colosseum of suburbia, where soccer moms in SUVs and part-time eco-fascists in Priuses are forced into a daily gladiatorial bloodbath. With one, sometimes two entrances and exits, narrow driveways, tight turning spaces, and enough room for hundreds of vehicles, parking lots seem to have been designed expressly to pit motorist against motorist, to be the place where near-road raging motorists finally crack and go on murderous rampages. I wonder what the parking garage death toll worldwide is.

My experiences as a victim of these labyrinths lead me to conclude that the engineers and architects behind the design of most large parking lots are sociopaths. The single entrance and exit, and cramped spaces can be explained away by the fact that land is at a premium, but bizarre numbering systems wherein parking space #499 directly precedes #800? Floor levels marked 4/5 and 5/6 instead of 4, 5, and 6? Obviously the work of a murderous sociopath who gains satisfaction from the torture of folks just trying to park.

Such was the picture the other day. My librarian friend Louise and I took the metro rail to Downtown Miami, and I parked at the Dadeland Station parking lot. This was not nearly as difficult as I’d previously expected. I even managed an easy to remember space: #711. As in “7-Eleven”. What I didn’t realize until we returned to the parking lot was that in this parking lot, numbers didn’t necessarily run in order. We were on floor 4/5, which was the floor we remembered parking on, started counting upward from the 400s, and immediately ended up in the 800s.

We took the elevator one level down, hoping that the 700s would be directly below the 800s. This, however, was not the method to this madness, for after some walking we found ourselves again in the 800s, and then the 900s. In addition to this, there was a series of about ten parking spaces on each floor numbered with each year in a particular decade. Cute, really cute. I’m sure there was much back-patting for that idea. At any rate, after climbing up as high as floor 5/6 and still finding ourselves nowhere near parking space #711, we were still at a loss.

From there, the details are hazy, but I do remember entering the elevator a second time, walking down about a half level, and then back up a bit, passing the 1980s series of parking spaces, and finally reaching space #711. I don’t really know how we got back to our space, and if I ever have to park in this parking lot again, I still won’t be able to navigate it any better. I can imagine someone leering at the monitor, watching us trudge through this maze through the security cameras with a sick pleasure. When you’re lost in a parking garage, it is definitely not you. I’m a college student and Louise is a librarian. Navigating numbers is her career.

I can only conclude that this parking garage was specifically designed for people to get lost in.

I used to be a cash-only type. It was only after being nagged by my parents and others on the importance of building one’s credit that I finally gave in and submitted myself to the slavery of participating in the Satanic control grid of international finance by signing up for a credit card. Recently, I opened an account with Bank of America and got their credit card because of an offer for $35. I felt that if I were to take this leap into the abyss, I might as well get a few dollars in return, which I could use to buy coffee at an international coffee chain, further enmeshing myself within this cruel globalist hellscape. Now, I find in the midst of the paperwork for a mortgage loan I’m going to get, I need to have yet another credit card.

I settled on the Chase PerfectCard because it gives me some money back on types of expenses I am likely to make, such as fueling, rather than offering “rewards” such as frequent flyer miles (I’ve never flown and cannot imagine when I will). I treat every credit card deal as a scam, perhaps just a notch or two more credible than your average Nigerian e-mail, so I make sure to read the fine print. The smaller the type, the more carefully I read. In this case:

To help the government fight the funding of terrorism and money laundering activities, Federal law requires all financial institutions to obtain, verify, and record information that identifies each person who opens an account.

Presumably that’s the (in)famous USA PATRIOT Act at work there. In the old days, credit card companies took down your personal information and ran credit checks because they wanted to make sure you could pay your bills. Now, they’re doing it to make sure you aren’t planning to use the card to buy terror gear at your local terrorist supply company.

You agree that we may share personal and account information about you with our affiliates for the purpose of marketing to you their products and services, including banking, insurance and investment products.

Once they’ve collected your personal information and made sure that you’re not a terrorist, they’re going to send it off to their affiliates so that you can receive more junk mail. Here, I’m waiving my right to not receive junk mail. Trees are being cut for this nonsense, and I am complicit.

The Cardmember Agreement contains a binding arbitration provision which may affect your rights to go to court, including your right to a jury trial or your right to participate in a class action or similar proceeding.

And here, I’m waiving my right to join a class-action lawsuit against Chase, should the need ever arise. When I agree to settle any disputes through arbitration. You’d be surprised how many times you sign away your right to sue a large company without knowing it. Many license agreements have an arbitration clause.

No annual fee first year. Thereafter, the $19 annual fee will be waived if at least nine (9) purchase transactions were made in the prior year.

And here, I am agreeing to become an indentured servant for one hour per year in order to eschew the $19 annual fee. If I buy nine $1 burritos at Taco Bell during the year in order to meet the requirement, that amounts to about what I am paid for an hour of work. Most credit cards have no annual fee, and they make sure to make a big deal about this fact. Except, it’s not a fact. If I don’t use my card enough, that annual fee magically manifests itself into being.

Nothing I read about this credit card screamed “deal breaker”, so I sent in my application. I’m just glad to know that I have to use this card at least nine times this year to waive the supposedly nonexistent annual fee. I’m not a terrorist or criminal, I’m not planning on suing anyone, and my personal information (like yours, like everyone’s) is already bought and sold constantly.

Just remember to read the fine print, folks.