Category: Tech

Techie items for the geek in me.

Dell charges for ‘Downgrade’

Bobby

Dell Inc. will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday, according to the company’s Web site.

The amazing floundering that is Microsoft Vista continues. A year and a half after it’s release, the public is still not convinced. Even though XP is scheduled to be pulled from the shelves on June 30th, there is still demand for XP on new computers and Dell is going to charge to meet that demand.

Even though Microsoft is going to stop selling XP licenses, it’s still within the terms of the Vista license to ‘downgrade’ a Vista Business or Vista Ultimate version to the XP Professional version.

Vista was released commercially in January 2007, nearly 17 months ago, but even with the release of Service Pack 1, the OS has not achieved widespread acceptance. In fact, it seems that anti-Vista sentiment is higher than ever. Back in January of this year Infoworld named Vista #2 on a list of all time PC flops, a dubious honor.

If you are in the market for a new PC and wondering if paying $50 for “last year’s technology” is worth it, you might want to take a peek at this tongue in cheek article reviewing an “upgrade” from Windows Vista to Windows XP.

.htaccess index file strangeness

Bobby

Recently had a situation where we have a website in progress and I wanted to password protect the site. Nothing major, just to keep casual visitors from poking around.

Thing is, I had a ad server installed in a subdirectory, and I wanted to use that ad server for other sites. I soon realized that my general .htaccess password requirement also extended to this sub directory and was causing the site ing the ads to prompt visitors for a password. Not great functionality.

So I went in search of some way to exclude the subdirectory from the .htaccess security. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to do this that seemed to work, but I did hit on a different solution.

Using the Files parameter I can limit my authentication to a single file, namely index.php

<Files index.php>
require valid-user
</Files>

This allows subdirectories, or any other file to be accessed without being prompted for authentication, but there is one additional issue.

If the file name is included in the url

http://www.foo.com/index.php

everything is fine. When the site is accessed by just the domain

http://www.foo.com/

and Apache attempts to load the default page (index.php) it doesn’t work. In fact the system s the following error

Authorization Required
This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document requested. Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g., bad password), or your browser doesn’t understand how to supply the credentials required.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

If anyone out there can explain why this happens, I would be very interested to hear it.

Newsflash – Cookies not harmful

Bobby

The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial today entitled Internet Says: ‘Me Want Cookie’ by L. GORDON CROVITZ.

This article basically brings to light a security hole in web browsers, the cookie, a concept that has been around since some of the first versions of Netscape over 10 years ago.

Crovitz, who is no technical neophyte and oversaw major changes in the WSJ both print and web version, wrote this piece as some kind of warning to websites and advertisers.

Even those of us who are enthusiastic about using the Web for what it does best, including access to highly customized information, agree there’s something potentially creepy about cookies. How are personal data used? Are our names, addresses and financial and health records really secret? Is anonymity permanent? These questions come just as what technology can do is changing our expectations about what information remains personal.

The bottom line is all the lies and fear around cookies are just that. Cookies are relatively benign. In fact, anyone with questions about them and how they work should just spend a few minutes and use Google for some answers. Sites like this All About Cookies article can give some good information and put some of your fear to rest:

Myth #3: Disabling or deleting cookies results in a safer, more enjoyable Web experience.
Fact: This is not true – in fact, cookies are what make the Web a more enjoyable, personalized experience. Without cookies, Internet users would have to remember all the passwords to all the different sites they visit. They would not be able to receive customized content, such as news, stock prices, sports scores or weather, and online shopping would be very cumbersome – if not impossible! Instead, consumers would receive irrelevant information and content, such as advertising that fails to correspond with their personal interests and needs. In addition, disabling or deleting cookies does not make Web users safer from viruses or other similar online threats.

The point of the article seems to be to discuss the possibility of regulation from politicians on the whole issue. While this would be unfortunate, it’s pretty much ridiculous. Regulating cookies, proving that their use was in violation of some law, proving that it was actually set by the offending website and establishing jurisdiction over the server that set the cookie would be a monumental and futile task. The bottom line is that a cookie can only include information you have submitted to a website. If you ARE going to send sensitive personal information to a website, make sure it’s a reliable party and you have a secure connection. Also make sure your system is behind a firewall and virus free. These are a much higher security/privacy risk than Cookies could ever be, but are ignored by millions of people across the country.

More Ikariam tips – combat

Bobby 12 Comments

I’ve learned a few more interesting things about Ikariam. Some of the most valuable are concerning attacking other cities, and being attacked.

  1. When attacking another city don’t leave your own undefended. Sure, you would think this was common sense, but peace and leads to a false sense of security. I recently thought I would try my hand at attacking a neighboring city. I sent all of my ships to attack a harbor, and while they were gone guess what happened. That’s right, somebody else attacked me and got away with a bunch of loot. Easy for them since my harbor was undefended.
  2. When attacked, move goods out of that city. The individual that attacked me the first time thought it was so lucrative, he launched another attack the next day. Fortunately I was watching the game and saw him coming, so I was able to make him pay. I quickly moved all of my valuable goods to a neighboring colony. He spent a lot of ships and troops to come away with a handful of gold, and no other loot. I’m sure the expedition was a costly one. Serves him right.
  3. Be sure you have enough wine when under siege. The biggest cost to me on both attacks was a lack of wine. My wine ran out and my citizens got angry and started jumping ship. Kind of irritating. Of course I couldn’t resupply quickly enough, and that’s cost me a lot of gold, which leads to my final tip for this session.
  4. Build big museums. Museums are nice because they allow you to keep your people happy with limited daily cost. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to maintain a large enough museum to keep a large city happy without wine, but it definitely softens the blow, and everyone is pretty happy to do a cultural exchange with you.

A couple interesting notes to make about the randomness of the game play. The combat reports of my recent hammering is no longer in my military section. I’m not sure why this is, if my opponent stopped playing the game. I don’t know if his attacks were so costly he was then overrun by someone else, or if there is some other reason why the history disappeared. This is unfortunate, I liked having that for reference. Another annoyance is the cost of maintaining an army altogether. The cost of maintaining, defending and attacking other players is astronomical. It’s difficult to come out of the deal and show a profit. You almost have to spy out the place before hand and then get lucky in order to generate a profit, and it’s really easy for your spies to get caught. Guess that’s a correlation with real life, intelligence gathering is difficult, and war can be extremely costly, but it would be nice if it was a little more economical to invade your neighbors.

Argus Green Bean Reviews?

Bobby 100 Comments

I was in a local Best Buy last week with my brother in law. I made the comment that I need a new camera. My good old Kodak Easy Share has been a great camera but I broke it last year when we were in Nebraska. Tried to put it under the seat of my Warrior and broke the screen.

My desire is for a rugged camera. I don’t need a lot of features, just something that’s easy to use and will withstand all of my trips to Moab, Walden and other off road destinations.

Amazingly enough, in the very aisle we are in I found the Argus Bean. It has an integrated clip, and a rubberized exterior, marketed as an outdoor camera. This camera appears to be exclusively available at Best Buy, and is reasonably priced at $59.

My question to you, gentle reader, is how good is this camera? Does anyone have one? Any thoughts, reviews, comments? Any other options on a reasonably priced, rugged, outdoor camera that would fit my needs?

If you have any information on this camera, or any others, please feel free to comment.

Capturing screenshots from Windows Media Player

Bobby

I have needed to get a screen shot out of a video image. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just doing a screen print. The image I’m trying to capture doesn’t come across correctly.

Fortunately I found an easy solution

  • Open Window Media Player
  • Then go to Tools | Options
  • In Options, select the Performance Tab
  • Way below you click on the Advanced Button
  • Uncheck “Use Overlays’
  • Click Ok

Read the whole tutorial on How to Capture Screenshots from Windows Media Player

Vim – Multiple Files

Bobby

One of the very cool things about Vim is the ease of editing multiple files. I like to use this capability when working on a website project and need to update lots of html files with something common, like a new link. Sure, sometimes there are other methods of doing this, like a simple command line search and replace perl script . Sometimes though, the regular expression is just too much of a pain to write, and it’s just easier, and faster, to edit all of the files.

The difficulty is, without menus, it can be tough to remember the syntax to move between files. In case you, like me, can’t remember how to edit multiple files, here is a little tutorial.

  1. Open multiple files with vim vim *.html
  2. Edit the first file
  3. Type :bn to move to the next file in the buffer
  4. Repeat

If you need additional command information, check out this great list of vim tips.

Learning the vi and Vim Editors

Ikariam

Bobby 2 Comments

Ikariam is an online game similar to Civ or AOE. It is completely free (at least so far) and completely browser based.

I’ve been playing for a couple weeks, and the really cool thing is it’s slow pace. I can check it a couple times a day, and it doesn’t take up a lot of my time.

After playing some, here are some tips I have for some of the more advanced/strategy items. If you have any tips, email me or post a comment, and I will include it.

  • Barracks One common strategy for players is to attack other players that have a 0 in their Generals score. When you build a new town, build a barracks and create some slingers so you get a general score and don’t get attacked as easy pickings.
  • Transport You can transport goods to another city, but when you do so your ship just goes and drops them off. You can’t load their ship with goods in return. Means that all commerce takes twice as long – kind of silly.
  • Trading Often people put goods out for sale at ridiculously low prices. Not sure why this is, but I have made quite a few game coins by buying at low prices and reselling at higher prices. For more, please read the review of stockpair
  • Size Worlds in Ikariam are SERIOUSLY huge. If you are going to play with friends try to join up near the same time. I had a friend join, and her island is a day and a half away by ship. Kind of irritating.
  • War For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem like the worlds are very warlike. Outside of some raiding on new towns there doesn’t seem to be a lot of fighting. Not quite sure how the whole battle thing works, you can siege and occupy a town. Not sure if there is any way of actually ‘owning’ that town, or if occupying it is essentially the same thing. Guess I should go attack someone and find out how it works.

Again, if you have comments, please leave them. Any tips on gameplay would be appreciated.

New Photo Gallery

Bobby

After much searching, I think I’ve found a good photo gallery for the wordpress blog

NextGEN Gallery appears to be a good upgrade from the WP Photo Album that I am currently using on Bob’s Bad Binder, and the Gallery software I’m using on this site.

WP Photo Album is good, but the one thing I really don’t like is the full size images run outside of the framework of the blog. NextGEN appears to use some nice AJAX to the gallery.

I’ll see if I can get it installed in the next day or two, do some testing, and then maybe get some pictures of last week’s trip to Moab up there.

One note, just to let everyone know. I think I’m going to post all my new Warrior info on Bob’s Bad Binder – it’s more of a motorsports oriented blog, just makes sense.