Keep Austin Corporate

John Dvorak has an excellent article up @ Yahoo! News expressing his disdain for the hype surrounding the iPhone. The opening is pure poetry:

This is the last week of Apple iPhone hype, hyperbole, and hand-wringing. Oh wait, I mean the last week of pre-iPhone hype, hyperbole, and hand-wringing—we have a few more post-iPhone months left on the calendar. I am sick of it. It's all anyone talks about. It dominates the news. It dominates the podcasts and videocasts and magazines. ADVERTISEMENT

Hitler got less coverage when he invaded Poland.

I couldn't agree more. I'm absolutely sick of hearing about the iPhone, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and a whole host of other useless subjects. I bought a new phone a couple weeks after the iPhone was announced, and I couldn't be happier with it. I wanted a phone with EVDO that I could tether to my laptop for fast Internet access while traveling at customer sites. To that end, the phone works beautifully.

I have a 1GB shuffle, 2GB nano, and a 60GB iPod video. Both my cell-phone and BlackBerry can play MP3 music and video. The last thing I need is to blow another $500 bux on yet another gadget that doesn't do anything new. I am not going to pay $500 for a "slick new touchscreen interface." Quite frankly, I could care less. I am getting a new MacBook Pro though :)

Posted by DJFelix at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Digg Direct RSS Feeds that I created a few weeks ago have been fixed.

Digg recently added a requirement that all applications include an Application Key with an application requests a feed. That's fine by me, it's their service, they get to make the rules.

A quick update to my cronjob, and everything is back on track. I even did a bit of touch-up work on the XSLT to clean the look up a bit.

If you missed it the first time, here are the feeds again:

Digg - Technology - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggTechnologyDirect
Digg - Entertainment - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggEntertainmentDirect
Digg - Gaming - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggGamingDirect
Digg - Science - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggScienceDirect
Digg - World & Business - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggWorldBusinessDirect
Digg - All Popular - Direct RSS - Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggPopularDirect

You can also download an OPML file to import into your favorite RSS aggregator here. These feeds are updated every two minutes, and are a direct translation of the services.digg.com feeds.

Posted by DJFelix at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I like reading Digg, but I very much dislike their RSS feeds. The RSS feeds don't include links direct to the article, don't show the number of diggs, etc. Digg does offer a "services" XML feed that includes all the information I want, but not in RSS format.

I got frustrated enough that I wrote an XSL Stylesheet to translate the Digg services XML feeds into RSS feeds. I have even posted them all up on FeedBurner:

Digg - Technology - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggTechnologyDirect
Digg - Entertainment - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggEntertainmentDirect
Digg - Gaming - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggGamingDirect
Digg - Science - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggScienceDirect
Digg - World & Business - Direct RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggWorldBusinessDirect
Digg - All Popular - Direct RSS - Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiggPopularDirect

You can also download an OPML file to import into your favorite RSS aggregator here. These feeds are updated every two minutes, and are a direct translation of the services.digg.com feeds.

You can also download a copy of my XSL file here.

Comments/suggestions welcome.

Posted by DJFelix at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I previously wrote an article regarding Mozilla Firefox no longer allowing one to "Open" files that are clicked on. In that article, I described a small hack that you could use to change the behavior back.

Mozilla released version 2.0.0.2 of Firefox, which included several bug fixes, including bug #347230.

Bug #347230 included a patch that overwrites my workaround.

The new code you will find, is at Line 385 in nsHelperAppDlg.js:

      if (shouldntRememberChoice && !this.openWithDefaultOK()) {

If you want to re-enable the workaround, change this to:

      if (shouldntRememberChoice && noDefaultApp && false) {

If you want to be able to directly launch executables, also look for the following around line 551:

        return !tmpFile.isExecutable();

Change this to:

        return true;

After that, the behavior goes back to what it used to be before the Mozilla developers decided they are smarter than us lowly users who need protection from the big bad Internet.

Posted by DJFelix at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

NTSB files: Pilots in Kentucky crash puzzled by runway - USATODAY.com Jeffrey Mcmurray, AP

NTSB officials on Wednesday opened the public docket on the Kentucky crash that killed 49 of 50 people on board. Polehinke, the lone survivor, lost a leg and suffered brain damage from the crash. He has told family members he remembers nothing about that morning.

The article goes on to indicate that the pilot thought the fact that the lights were out was "weird" and exclaimed "whoa" moments before the crash.

I don't know about you, but if I was moving onto a runway that had no lights, I would have at least asked for confirmation that I was in the right place.

Posted by DJFelix at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things I love about Vonage phone service is that I never get harassed by telemarketers. Well, that is all about to change. Vonage just updated their Privacy Policy, and there is one section that stands out:

Opt-out Policy If you do not want your PII used by Vonage for any direct marketing purposes, then you may opt-out of such disclosures by calling us at 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357).

What does that tell you? Vonage is a publicly traded company now. They need to start turning a profit after their abysmal IPO that has landed them a class-action lawsuit. I almost jumped in on the Vonage IPO after missing opportunities in the Red Hat and VA Linux IPO's. This new desire to turn a profit, coupled with the new privacy policy, means that Vonage is either planning on, or has already begun selling subscriber info to marketers.

I called in to opt-out, and they don't make it easy. You start in voice-mail jail, where I had to navigate through three layers of menus, before jamming 0 to get a rep. Once I waited long enough to get a rep on the phone, I had to give my name, phone number, username, email address, and credit card billing address, just to verify I am who I say I am. Once that was done, I asked to opt-out of the new privacy policy. I was then asked "which phone number" I wanted to opt-out. I informed the genius on the other end of the call, I only have ONE Vonage number. He got me sorted out, and I ended the call. There is only one thing that bothers me. This new policy went into effect yesterday, and there is this little nugget in the opt-out policy:

However, we are not responsible for removing your PII from the lists of any third party who has previously been provided your information in accordance with this policy. Since Vonage must use a Customer's PII in order to provide them with Vonage services, Customers cannot opt-out of all uses of their PII unless they cancel their service.

Great. That means that if they sold my name/number yesterday, I'm going to get calls regardless. Thanks Vonage. I was one of your first customers, and this is how you repay my loyalty. Maybe it's time to switch to Skype.

Posted by DJFelix at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever since I installed Mozilla Firefox 2.0 I have noticed that certain file extensions that I used to be able to "Open" by clicking now pop up this new dialog box that doesn't show the open option at all, and only allows FlashGot. It took me a while to realize that there was a "Save" button that would allow me to save the file, and open it from the download manager. Why should I have to go through the extra step.

I did a bit of googling, and found this flame war that erupted in July while Firefox 2.0 was still in Beta, which lead me to bug #315536 and yet another flame war.

It appears as if the intent was to "protect" people from accidentally configuring Firefox to always open executables without prompting. In my opinion, they threw the baby out with the bath water, and now any mime-type that isn't explicitly configured in Firefox gets the new screwy dialog:

This annoyed the hell out of me, so I decided to try a suggestion from that first flame war. I found the nsHelperAppDlg.js file in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components and changed:

      if (shouldntRememberChoice && noDefaultApp) {

To:

      if (shouldntRememberChoice && noDefaultApp && false) {

After a quick restart of Firefox, the dialog changed to:

This may get overwritten if I upgrade/re-install Firefox, but I can deal with that. This is a simple enough change that just about anyone should be able to do it. It's always a good idea to make a backup copy of the file before you make the change though. Enjoy!

Update: If you are having trouble with this workaround after updating to Firefox 2.0.0.2, read this update.

Posted by DJFelix at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)