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Monday, March 29, 2004
Tribute to a Man whom Un-bunked my History 9:31 AM
When I was a freshman in high-school, my American history teacher exposed us to
Alistair Cooke's America series throughout the year. I was spellbound by Alistair Cooke's presentation and amazing insight into American history. I look forward to the day my son will be old enough to be exposed to his works, as well.
With Alistair Cooke's passing we have lost a great historian, journalist, and, especially needed in these times, Americanophile. "And so the fairy-tale ends."
Monday, March 22, 2004
Play it Again, Samwise Gamgee 5:47 PM
Flying Moose has a amazingly enjoyable and well-done
Lord of the Rings Movie Spoof, which you will want to go download
right now before it gets slashdotted.
Their collection of other
Tolkien Sarcasm isn't too shabby, either.
Monday, March 15, 2004
Too Many Standards 10:25 AM
I've been itching to buy a DVD recorder for two years now, but I haven't. Like any good consumer I decided to investigate what the manufacturers have to offer before committing to a purchase.
Well, I didn't even get that far.
Even before I could consider a manufacturer or model of DVD recorder, I had to decide of format. It turns out that there are a bewildering assortments of DVD recording formats: DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-Video, and DVD-ROM. Some formats will play on some DVD players - some won't. So formats are good at some things while other formats are faster to burn.
Lost in this technological alphabet soup I turned to a number of DVD enthusiast web sites only to discover that the case seems to be that anyone with the brain power to understand the issue comprehensively is also incapable to explaining it in simple terms.
So I gave up. I figured that one standard would emerge as the leader and then I could buy a burner. Well, I've been waiting two years.
I just happened to see a press release from
the Recordable DVD Council today. It is an industry backed DVD awareness group with the mission to educate the public on DVD recording formats and options. Well, it's about damned time, I say.
Look, my needs are simple: I want to burn DVD's with my own movies and use it as a backup mechanism. The movies I burn have to play on my DVD player, on my computer, and my father's DVD player. I don't think that is asking too much.
It's time the industry wakes up to the fact that there are people like me hanging on to a few hundred dollars waiting for them to get their act together.
Monday, March 08, 2004
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished 10:41 AM
I applaud California lawmakers in their efforts to protect consumers against identity theft with the passage of
SB 1386. The new law requires all companies doing business in California to notify state residents when customer information has been compromised due to a security breach. I wish Tennessee would pass such a law, because I know first hand how identity theft can destroy your life.
Back in 2001 I decided to 'do the right thing' and pay for some shareware I was using. The shareware author had set himself up with a company named
Element 5 to accept payments for him. I dutifully went to their site and made the payment with my credit card. One week later I received this strange message on my answering machine from some guy at Yahoo asking to confirm my purchase of site hosting service and email accounts. Frenzied investigations revealed that someone had gone on a shopping spree using my credit card and had bought web site hosting and a new laptop. Since I don't have a 'real' credit card, but one of those cards that pretends to be a credit card but is actually a debit card, my bank account was cleaned out.
I went to the bank right away and reported the theft. Luckily for me, the Visa First Check card offers theft protection similar to what you get with a regular Visa card, so I was protected. I filled out several forms and spent two weeks biting my nails waiting for Visa to approve my reimbursement. I did get every cent back - thank you Visa.
Being the conscientious guy that I am, I sent an email to Element 5 telling them that I believed their security has been breached. I had good reason to suspect them; their site was the only place I had made an online purchase that month. Element 5 never returned my email. Visa didn't even care about where I thought the breach was. The bank wasn't interested. Everyone's attitude was, "you're covered so it's no big deal."
Without a doubt, I think that shopping online is much more secure now than it was in 2001. Still, I don't buy from mom and pop stores with any-old-shopping-cart-software. I won't do so until someone comes up with a better security model.
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