I just installed Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1. Wow, this thing is fast. It’s also smaller and better. I’m dumping the old Mozilla Navigator browser immediately.
The default download offered for Linux is missing xft support that enables anti-aliased fonts under RedHat. I can’t stand reading text that isn’t anti-aliased. Such text rendering should be banned. I found a version with xft and svg, and now I’m golden.
I’ve been looking into ways to better protect my data. You may remember that I recently experienced a failure on a large hard disk that nearly devastated me. So, now I’ve gotten SMART — Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology System. SMART is built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks. In many cases, it can provide advanced warning of hard disk failure. When it’s enabled, the disk records attributes like seek/read error rate, calibration retries, and reallocated sectors. (Note that my disk failed after it filled its sector reallocation table.)
So I installed the SmartMon Tools on my Linux boxes. It enables SMART on your disks and monitors changes in performance attributes. The disk manufacturer decided which attributes to expose and what threshold values indicate you should worry about it. An attribute may indicate the disk will fail (”pre-fail”) or that it has worn-out past its intended life (”old-age”). For example, power-on hours is an old-age attribute, while calibration retries is pre-fail.
SmartMon just enables and monitors the SMART attributes. It can take action when an attribute reaches its threshold, or when it simply changes. Actions can be an e-mail messages or running a script. The best part about SMART is that it doesn’t impact the performance of your drive, as long as you use online attributes. SmartMon can also occassionally (every four hours) check offline attibutes, which brings the drive offline during an idle period to run a short (and more thorough) test (usually lasting just seconds).
Add to my list of improvements for a distro to have SmartMon running as a default service. (Along with starting services asynchronously to improve the
boot time.) Man, are Microsoft OSes doing SMART? Because they are missing out once again.
The RIAA is really ticking me off with their “sue everyone, sue customers” campaign. I think the news that they sued a 12-year old girl for downloading music was the last straw for me. Everything from the price fixing, blaming finances on downloaders, lobbying for copyright law changes, underpaying artists, invading privacy, and bringing down file sharing networks has led to my final decision: I’m never buying another CD released by a member of RIAA again. Thanks to RIAA Radar, it’s easy to identify RIAA-safe music. Between the independent artists at Amazon, mp3.com, and the whole library at CDBaby.com, I should have no problem getting my electronic music fix.
I really like this artist Antinomie from France. Why do Europeans do techno so well? It makes so much more sense to support artists directly.
The infoporn section of Wired 11.10 shows statistics that CD prices have climbed 16 percent since 1997, after being adjusted for inflation. Listeners are paying more and purchasing less — sales sank 7 percent. Maybe if they made CDs cheaper, and they had a good online model for downloads, they could make some money.
I like this article from USAToday about the music industry not knowing how to handle file sharing. The history of disruptive technology is interesting. Electricity and the kerosene business, cars and buggies, movies and VCRs. Somehow, the industry involved has always adapted to make money a new way.
Rebates are a scam. Everything at Best Buy has a rebate. They put the price in bold big numbers that includes your rebate, with the price you pay at the register in tiny print. I don’t know why I keep sending these things in. They never send me a check.
I bought a Maxtor hard drive with a $50 rebate. I followed the directions precisely, sending in my original UPC by cutting it off the box. Today, they send me a postcard telling me that I won’t get my rebate because I dd not include the original UPC. No problem, they say, just send in the original and they’ll complete the rebate. Ha! How convenient that they “lost” the original. I should be impressed that they even replied instead of counting on me to forget after 3 months.
I needed the drive immediately, so I went to the store, but next time I’ll use the money I save online to FedEx what I need. I like to buy “white box” stuff from mwave. Mwave, I’m sorry I betrayed you!
Slate has an article called the “Great Rebate Scam,” but apparently its author has had some better luck than me.
I’m surprised the Star Wars kid hasn’t been on CNN by now. 
Or maybe I just missed it. If you haven’t heard of this, read an introduction to the story here. Basically, some 15-year-old kid made a private movie of himself pretending to wield a light sabre, and it got posted to the web and downloaded by millions. The movie has been edited to add special effects, music, and graphics.
Imagine the embarrassment for this kid. People have started funds to send him money, and there’s even a petition to get him a cameo in Episode III. Geez, in my days, if you did something stupid in high school, you only had the student body to contend with. Nowadays, your distress can be made known throughout the world in Internet time.