janos erdelyi

my new arch enemy is one that has been growing over time, like some sort of idiot-virus disguised as user-friendliness. unfortunately it’s ignorant-user-friendly and knowledgeable-user-obstructionist-craptasm-from-hell. let me introduce you to “Insert CD First!” for networking equipment.

it used to be the case that i could plug in a new Linksys router, go to 192.168.1.1, put in the default password, and blamo now i can configure.

recently i needed some basic, inexpensive wireless, so i went to the store, and spent $30 on a Linksys WRT54G and discovered a Windows XP or Windows Vista only CD with instructions all over about inserting the CD first. the ethernet ports on the back were even covered with a sticker yelling at me to insert the CD first!

personally i’ve been drifting away from Microsoft for quite a while after using it avidly for years. no, i’m not going to Apple. Apple is a far more draconian, abusive relationship than Microsoft could ever hope to be – they just happen to be much smaller with far better PR. yes, that’s right, i’ve been drifting to Linux for a few years now.

but – i want Microsoft to succeed! i really do. i think they have much to offer, yet they are their own worst enemy. just look at Vista and it’s many versions. who are they intended to appeal to? it’s kinda hard to say. they have names, but ultimately, their feature spread is jumbled, and almost whimsical in nature. not to mention Microsoft is notorious for completely heinous default choices. what else would explain Outlook Express being on my Windows 2003 Server machines? really?

one of Windows’ strengths is backwards compatibility, but the nature of that compatibility is a mess. some is legitimate servicing of older APIs, some is using undocumented methods, some is using outright broken behavior. it’s all over the place, and it’s ugly, but at the same time, it’s the beauty of the ecosystem. but at this point it’s choking the life out of the future of the platform.

Update: the dilbert site has been reworked and it now has a feed. i’m subscribed!

does it bother anyone else that dilbert.com does not offer an rss feed?

i don’t care if the feed sends down the ads, i’m not opposed to that, just let me get it in a feed.

i’m really just making a note, so that i don’t forget and so that it hopefully helps someone else.

when installing Fedora 8, the installation hung up on “Loading ata_piix“. mine eventually got past it, but my harddrive was not found. so…

when starting the install, hit [tab] so that you can add kernel arguments. add ‘irqpoll’ to the end and you should be rolling right along!

it’s been quite some time since i posted some actual code, as well as an article, so here’s a brief, but handy snippet under the right situations.

the other day i had need to dump an object into a database, but the various properties of the object itself did not warrant distinct fields in the database. i really just needed a place to persist the state of an object from load to load of a test. in this case, it was a System.Net.Cookie, though just about anything serializable will do.

note: i like to use aliases and i haven’t run across many people familiar with them, so i’ll put them in here. don’t let them be too distracting!

this may be old hat to some, it may be lame or incomplete to ancient bearded Unix Wizards living in hollowed-out mainframe carcasses. but for those who just need to get through a firewall and encrypt some traffic, this may be the way to go.

i’m going to go through a quick and painless method for Windows users. those of us also on linux just kinda have this ability at the touch of a command-line.

note: port 22 ssh traffic can and may be blocked depending on the particular network admins at your location. there is such a thing as tunneling the traffic over http, in which case, if surfing is allowed, then you‘re home free. alas, that’s out the scope of this article.

symbolic links on *nix systems are old hat. so what about our Windows brethren?

i was poking around and searching for something like symbolic links on Windows the other day to save me some hassle, as well as keep some current file paths intact for some services which were already in play.

lo and behold, i ran across junction.exe

i have been increasingly seeing “carbon neutral” computer hardware where by you spend even more money so that hopefully someone, somewhere receives the post-administrative leftovers and plants a fraction of a tree on your behalf. maybe.

Dell does it, dude.

if you have a yard, here’s how you can “think globally, act locally” and “get off your ass” – get up, go to a local green house, buy a tree. plant the tree. water the tree. enjoy the tree.

some history : i’m a long-time Windows user, but i’ve also been using linux for a variety of things for a few years, though only recently for a graphical desktop.

if there is one thing you should never, ever do in a Windows world is to install a newer version over top of an older version. that’s begging for problems. i have always been blessed with very stable Windows installations, but then again, i am a very strict disciplinarian and follower of basic good practice on my machines. instability tends to be a 3rd party application problem.

however, i have been having great success updating existing installations of Fedora and i thought i’d let everyone know. i’ve done several machines on both x86 as well as PPC with zero problems – one is even an iBook from around 2001.

to be clear, i mean those really small truncated feeds. you know the ones – the ones that don’t really even give you enough info to generate enough interest-momentum to click through. i’ll hope those are the ones you unsubscribe from as well. i’ll go so far as to postulate that those with partial feeds just don’t “get it“.

there, i said it. i point with accusatory finger. you don’t get it. because if you did, you’d treat RSS as another avenue of traffic, not just some hopeful funnel to your “real” site.

on a more serious note and tone, i do think that partial feeds inherently impact the adoption of RSS in a bad way. imagine your parents. imagine your less technically inclined or technically caring spouse – why would they use RSS if they still have to visit sites? in all likeliness they aren’t trolling all that many sites in day – they have no need to get a quick view of their world and then filter and reduce to the key pieces of interest. if anything, an RSS interface in front of their web experience is simply a waste of time.