I finally went to the doctor this week for a pain in my neck. I figured it was just a muscle strain (it is) but they took an x-ray to check the bones. My wife works there so I was able to go “behind the curtain” to see my x-rays. I was looking for a wall light fixture to pin the sheets of x-rays on but there was not one there. Instead they had a scanner like machine that they placed the x-rays into & then it uploaded the images to the computer. So we were able to look at the images on a nice big screen. Pretty cool I thought. You could basically do anything you could with a regular photo. They moved it around and zoomed in on the bones they wanted to look at. The picture was crystal clear and much better than the old school way of doing this procedure. Now I have no idea how much this little gizmo cost but I reckon it was close to the cost of a small car. I don’t know if it is worth the cost but I do know it is better in many ways: visible details, digital storage, easily copied, can be emailed to the patient or a specialist. Things like this make better medical options available to us common geeks. I was just glad I got to see it in action.
In-House Wireless Frustration
I am becoming frustrated with my in-house wireless solution. I have ATT high-end DSL, and the modem and combination router rest in the lower level of the house, albeit on a shelf that is less than 2 feet from the ceiling. The lower level of the house is half underground, on the back side, but not underground at all, on the front side (i.e., the house is built into the side of a rock ledge consisting of iron-laden limestone). Directly above the router in the dining room, I can get a signal quite well on my laptop and the one wireless desktop I have in that area. I can even get 4 out of 5 bars on the patio, which is at least 30 feet from the router and on the other side of a host of domestic appliances (washer/dryer/freezer), our electrical intake box, and a metal and glass patio door.
But how dare me want to walk down the hall to the bedroom to use my laptop; less than 30 feet from the router, even with a parabolic enhancer on both router antennas, my wireless drops to a bar or less, and usually just is out of range altogether. This annoys me to no end! And I don’t understand it, as this is a pre-1070’s frame-based ranch house with no inside pillars, and my wireless signal should transmit easily to that part of the house.
Even my neighbor sees my wireless signal at 4 of 5 bars in his house, 50 feet away from the router. That would mean for him it is passing through two concrete walls, across his garage, and upstairs into his living room, when it can’t go merely down the hall to my bedroom less than 30 feet away.
I’m not wireless savvy enough to know what solutions I may have available. I am using a Linksys combo wired/wireless router, with four computers wired, and the rest working wirelessly. I would like for my kids to be able to use the laptops anywhere in the house, including their rooms, but right now, that just isn’t possible. Any suggestions appreciated at this point.
GNC-2008-10-07 #414 guest host Mike James
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Show Notes:
Black Friday Deals debate
Mercury flyby
Black Holes
Dish to pay TIVO
Disinfectant worries
DVD Copies
Ubuntu and Fedora
Musical artists want control
Astronaut’s diary
Footprints
Encryption vulnerability
Stressful test
Credit Cards on WEP
AT&T payments
Good grief
Open source victory
Weird Al
Cable service
Big Bubble
Then -vs- Now Moonshot
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XP Gets Six More Months to Live
According to multiple sources, Windows XP has received another six-month reprieve. This means that certain manufacturers and OEM providers can still put Windows XP on machines until the end of July, 2009.
I have lots of theories on why this is happening. XP has received two extensions already since Vista’s launch. While I have a couple machines running Vista now, my primary desktop machine at work is XP, and will be for quite some time. This is likely true in a lot of businesses and schools around the country, as upgrading to Vista is proving to be cost-prohibitive for most. The only machines that can run Vista here are ones we purchased especially to do so, which means they are extremely high-end, with at least 4 gb of RAM, which raises the cost of the hardware considerably. On a college campus like mine, where there are upwards of 2500 computers, that additional hardware cost is just out of our reach.
Is this third extension a result of Microsoft listening to its customers regarding the problems with the new Vista operating system? I doubt it. Since Microsoft (and most other businesses) are in the business of making money, the slow adoption rate of Vista is affecting their bottom line. That’s the kind of language they are likely to be listening to, and realizing that they can sell an awful lot of copies of XP while Vista sits languishing.
I, for one, am glad that XP has been granted a few more months to live.
Xohm Quietly Being Offered in Other Cities
After being formally and loudly introduced in Baltimore last week, Xohm has now quietly been turned on in six other major places: Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and northern Virginia.
As much nay-saying as there’s been about WiMax every coming to fruition, I’m pleasantly surprised by its current distribution and sudden growth. This gives me great hope that WiMax will indeed work, and be available in more and more places throughout the country as time goes by.
WiMax, to me, is the perfect solution to a pesky problem, and can be offered as easily in rural areas as in urban ones, and I live in a semi-rural area that is quickly becoming fully suburban. I figure if they can build a giganto Walmart on our existing infrastructure, then WiMax is more than possible.
Still crossing my fingers that this continues to take off.
Wikipedia manipulation exposed
The Register reports on how the wikipedia entries on short selling, and possibly other financial sections where being controlled by a person with a very biased view on these subjects. The article alleges that one the effects control of this section of articles had was to supress discussion of the negative side of ‘naked short selling’. This type of activity has had an impact on the current financial crisis, and the supression of discussion bridged into the mainstream press.
The worry from a technical viewpoint is that someone was essentially given moderater style controls over a topic that they had a vested interest in. I find this disturbing as these clear conflicts of interest should be easy to avoid. I do not think it is necessary to have any more checks on contributers identities than there already is. There are a number of people that track for spurious entries and it is better to make it easy to contribute so more information comes in.
The topic moderators, acting as editors of the content should be held to a much higher standard of identification. If no person on Wikipedia was allowed to become a moderator, or any kind of administrator, without some verifiable identity checking being performed. It would be silly to expect absolute accuracy from a service like Wikipedia. If it is to survive though, it must demonstrate that it is protecting itself from such gross manipulations as seems to have occured here. It really also needs to take steps to make sure it is protected to some degree from agendas.
Each person with any moderation or administration responcibility needs to verify their true identity in some way. They then need to be vetted for any potential conflicts of interest. A conflict should not bar them from looking after a topic as their knowledge would be valuable in evaluating what goes on there. If there is a conflict a second person that has no conflict should be required to verify their decisions. This second person (or people) don’t need the knowledge they just need to challenge the moderator for evidence to backup their decision. While these people do not need to have their full identities disclosed any potential conflicts of interest should be clearly stated on their profile.
My New “PDA”
My New PDA
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by technology and need to unplug yourself? I know I do. I have stuff stored in my cell phone, on my laptop, in an online calendar, and on a clipboard. The bad thing is I have a hard time finding what I need when I need it. It seems like I have all the tools to be organized but the tools themselves become clutter. An example is a simple list of oil & fuel filters I use for all our vehicles. I have it on a piece of paper (somewhere), in my phone (when I can find it), & on my email application. But when it is time to buy the filters I have a hard time getting to the information I need. So last week I de cluttered a lot of stuff. Some crap went on ebay but more went in the trash. Then I went to the Dollar General store in town & picked up my new PDA….. a 3×5 inch spiral note pad (Personal Declutter Assistant). Everything that I need to schedule immediately or remember I write down in this little book and I keep it with me all the time. I also use a pencil with an eraser to write with, something I never used to use except in school. I can hear the giggles coming across the bandwidth as you read this. I used to make fun of older guys carrying notepads with 3 inch pencils but you know what they had very organized & “clean” lives. I am not getting rid of my gadgets or downing technology. I am just cleaning up the life a bit.
The greatest example of this simple lifestyle was when I was right out of high school in 1992 -1993. I was working at a automobile distribution center. We had to purchase our own tools so two different tool companies came around weekly, a Mac Tools guy & the Snap On guy. The Snap On guy was younger with a computer on the truck and some kind of hand held device to enter information. This was the early nineties so high tech is a relative term! The Mac Tool guy was an older gentleman with …… a small notepad and a pencil. Can you guess which one was more successful (at least in my workplace)? The Snap On guy was not there some weeks and rarely had the tool you needed and you had to wait longer to get it. The Mac man was always there every week & usually had what you needed and if not he would get it the very next week. Now if we reversed the guys & tools I think the older guy would have still been more organized. So it really is an attitude & life philosophy more than a tech or non tech thing. I think that we just let our brains get scattered with too many devices to store too much information.