John Griogair Bell's Blog

Category: Technology

  • Frontier Communications is wack and sketchy

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    John Bell
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    If you are using Frontier Communications, check your bill. I happened to notice, randomly, not because I was looking, an article about Frontier Communications billing issues and overcharges. People battling Frontier Communications over billing issues, overcharges—Lauren Rozyla, ABC Action News From the start, Danielle Ferrari, has been in a battle with Frontier Communications. She owns…

  • Comparing unscientific speed test results

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    Comparing unscientific speed test results in my phone using 1) satellite 2) LTE 3) DSL

  • Societies with secrets, security culture and online social media

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    There’s a post about a new Social Media Code of Conduct for Massachusetts Freemasons [PDF] (HT @Masonictraveller) over at Freemason Information, part of The Beehive series by Fred Milliken. This document mentioned is particularly interesting to me because it touches on some issues I think are important; and the reactions to the document are also…

  • 90s movies 404 not found

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    I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s certainly funny. iTunes was having a little trouble today, but you know it was artfully designed trouble:

  • The ultimate ipad dock

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    A while ago, I posted my idea of the ultimate iPhone dock. and it seem only fitting that I also post the ultimate iPad dock. Honestly, I’m not nearly the first person to come up with the idea of pairing the iPad with the old-school Star Trek PADD, but I felt it needed to be…

  • Permission Revoked

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    I hereby formally, officially and categorically deny, refuse and repudiate the recent changes to the Facebook Terms of Use as they apply to the unilateral, unacceptable and unconscionable claim that Facebook owns my original content in perpetuity. I have therefore removed all imported content from my personal site and I assert my personal prior and…

  • The ultimate iphone dock

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    I had an idea for the ultimate iphone dock. To heck with an iPhone pro … First, get an iPhone and dock. Then go buy an old Apple Newton eMate on eBay. Then, gut the eMate. Yeah, I know I shudder at the thought of murdering such a cute little Newton as well, but ……

  • Learn something new

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    I activated this accidentally when typing an e-mail and found out that it’s a feature. Who knew? (Probably everyone, right?) I mean, not that I’ll probably use it all that much, but … hit ‘esc’ while typing and get a completion list, cool! Doesn’t work for in HTML forms or in the toolbar of Safari,…

  • Mirror’s Edge, Parkour-Continuum

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    There’s a video of game play at “Mirror’s Edge: Mirror’s Edge DLC In Motion“: “As someone who has never had occasion to play the game, this video, with its vertigo-inducing visuals and that catchy Still Alive song has certainly got me wondering what I’ve been missing. While I’m not a big fan of Time Trials,…

  • Cricket broadband at $40/mo, uncapped

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    Via Boing Boing Gadgets, Cricket is going to be getting a USB version EVDO modem for their wireless broadband service, and an uncapped data package at almost the same price as dial-up: “PC card only for now, but a USB version is coming—with truly unlimited wireless data access with uncapped usage for just $35 a…

  • Bento

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    Ah, here it is finally. I figured there would be something like this coming from inside the Apple camp. Via “Meet Bento — Learn More” Bento organizes all your important information in one place. So you can manage your contacts, coordinate events, track projects, prioritize tasks, and more — faster and easier than ever before.…

  • Resist the dark side

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    Via Groklaw, the ruling of a court is that: “Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.” Now, for the love of all that is holy, can I dare to hope that Novell won’t slip further toward the dark side? I hope Novell heard and understood that canard: “With great power comes great…

  • The iMovies

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    Hmm … separated at birth? [see, also]

  • All because of spam

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    I don’t think this is the first time, actually, but I realized something crazy had happened today. I got spam sent to my e-mail. Yeah, okay, except that the subject line of one particular spam contained content that was interesting to me. Or, rather, it suggested there was content of interest to me in a…

  • Stardock has a Cosmic Encounter

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    I noticed Stardock’s walkthru of Dark Avatar includes a feature that is a key part of the game design of Cosmic Encounter. [also, also] “Each civilization has its own unique super-ablity. And they’re not afraid to use it. Here, ‘someone’ has persuaded the Altarians to go to war with the Korx. Someone has the Super…

  • How does ZFS compare to Plan 9?

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    Now that Sun is being quoted as saying that the next version of Mac OS X (Leopard) will use ZFS, I thought to read a bit more about What is ZFS?: “ZFS presents a pooled storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded…

  • Game developer gets gamed by players

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    So there’s a recent kerfuffle involving accusations of corruption in EVE Online, the game not the ecofeminism. There were some accusations of the developer colluding with favored players that created a stir. Then, after a delay, the game company responds that they’ve been framed; via Slashdot: “The objective of this scheme was to permanently paint…

  • Icebreaker 2 is new old

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    The pending release of Icebreaker 2, a video game that is a sequel to an old 3DO console game that features the virtual pre-cursor to Icehouse pyramids, snuck up on me and yelled, “Boo!” Sorry for this tangent, but this is a game that might have been lost behind obsolete copy protection if that protection…

  • Wake me when the ambient sound is live

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    Over at Slashdot, there’s a post about a new mash-up: “The BBC is reporting that a Californian company has created software that can layer relevant recorded sounds over locations in Google Earth.” But here’s the thing: The analog to the high resolution images of the real earth would be to layer those images with the…

  • Surprisingly helpful

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    I was browsing around, and ended up on the page for the ‘defectivebydesign’ tag users at Amazon have added to products in the catalog. And, when I scrolled down toward the bottom of the page, there’s a handly little helper bit of the UI that makes it almost too easy: Now, that’s the way to…