You know there is a problem when an HP VP in Israel tells you about something funny they read on Memestreams.
Yes its nice that I can complain (loudly) about a certain firm's software and get a phone call from the product manager less than 24 hours later asking how to make it better.
But it sucks when a motley collection of idle thoughts and rants is read, with seriousness no less, by people of means and influence. And then people ask me about it in meetings. Talk about odd. Silly people, my blog isn't like some other blogs in the security space (ala a mouthpiece for a company or to drive a consulting biz). Its just what it is, and what it is is most certainly not a catalyst for work place discussion or an indication of policy.
[sigh] I was quite happy without Acidus == Billy Hoffman being public knowledge. It was that way for 6+ years. Of course then Blackboard went and blew that out of the water. If only I would publish under another name.
Or maybe I already have ;-) No, I'm not that clever. Or maybe!?!.... nope, nada.
“HACKERS, welcome! Here are detailed circuit diagrams of our products — modify them as you wish.”
That’s not an announcement you’ll find on the Web sites of most consumer electronics manufacturers, who tend to keep information on the innards of their machines as private as possible.
But Neuros Technology International, creator of a new video recorder, has decided to go in a different direction. The company, based in Chicago, is providing full documentation of the hardware platform for its recorder, the Neuros OSD (for open source device), so that skilled users can customize or “hack” the device — and then pass along the improvements to others.
The OSD is a versatile recorder. Using a memory card or a U.S.B. storage device, it saves copies of DVDs, VHS tapes and television programs from satellite receivers, cable boxes, TVs and any other device with standard video output.
Because the OSD saves the recordings in the popular compressed video format MPEG-4 (pronounced EM-peg), the programs can be watched on a host of devices, including iPods and smartphones. The OSD is for sale at Fry’s, Micro Center, J&R Electronics and other locations for about $230. I recorded a show from a DVD this way and, to my delight, I was soon watching it on my iPod. Thank you, hackers!
There are other people who should read this book. Your girlfriend will better understand why you turn into a jerk in your home office. Your mom will understand why you don’t call. Giving this book to your boss is a tricky proposition. Even if he needs it, you can’t tell him that, so surreptitiously leave it in his office… like a pen.
Managing Humans is 209 pages with 34 chapters. The 6 pages per chapter average is ideal for your attention deficient lifestyle. People dig it.
This book isn't just about management, it's about creating places where people can comfortably build stuff. It's about what to do during the first ninety days of your new gig, and explains why you should pick a fight, because bright people often yell at each other.
The files listed here are all ZIP files, which contain a REG (Registry) file. Each of the REG files contains the default settings for the file extension indicated.
So I went and downloaded Netscape Communicator 4.something to test some of the JavaScript I'm writing for Memetreams. After shuttering at how arcane installers were back-in-the-day, I find that the front page of Memestreams crashes it. I figure the some of embedded Flash for Google/Youtube videos might be doing it, so I go into the browser's preferences and remove every file association hoping it will not spawn the Flash player (which in retrospect wouldn't have worked anyway... stupid object tag GUIDS...). Unfortunately, this actually killed the file associations not for the browser, but for Windows!
Tom posted some quick enhancements I made to Memestreams today. If you are running IE 7 or Firefox 2+ you you might notice your search bar is glowing while browsing Memestreams. You can install MemeStreams as a search provider with one click now in both those browsers as shown below:
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Of course, those of you who regularly search MemeStreams may have a complaint or two about the performance. We're fixing that soon. Its entirely a disk I/O problem and we'll be buying a new server with better storage performance when the new machine comes online in February.
Spork wrote: Some dissent over at digg. another reason people should be using memestreams... Hopefully the number of users here will grow.
Its all about Metcalfe's Law. The more people that use Memestreams, the more data the reputation agent has to process, the better and more personalized the results are that get returned when you click "Agent" at the top of the screen. We have been seeing some good growth numbers and that makes us happy (seeing how we do this for free).
We are working on numerous improvements that should make Memestreams more usable. I don't want to give you the full list, so I'll give you what I'm personally committed to delivering by April 1st.
-Faster box with more ram so the search feature doesn't have to hit disk to access the indexes. -Replacing the categories system with tags -Export Memestream content
