Nerdzapper

Singapore has decided to ban Microsoft’s XBOX game Mass Effect because of a scene containing lesbian intimacy. There is a spot in the game where a couple women are kissing and caressing each other.

Here’s the strange part. One of the women is human and the other is alien. Does that even fall under the classification of lesbian activity? I always assumed that lesbians were females of the same species. When the two people involved are different species, I think gender would not really be that important in deciding whether it is okay or not.

I’m not sure what you call it when one person is a human and the other is an alien but maybe the Singapore officials should look it up and ban the game for that instead.

As you all probably saw a bit ago, the One Laptop Per Child project officially announced consumer sales of their laptops starting November 12. The way it works is that if you donate $200 to buy a laptop for a child in a developing country, you can buy one for yourself for $200. In other words, for $400 you can buy the $100 laptop.

See that last sentence up there. That’s me being cynical. I see where they’re coming from here and hope they sell many of these. I really do believe that getting technology into the hands of those who otherwise wouldn’t is a great thing. I’m just not sure it’s for me.
As I’ve said in a previous post, these are actually pretty cool devices technology wise. They’re durable, have crazy battery life, and some interesting charging ideas. They are small enough they might even make a decent e-book reader. I’m just not sure it’s worth $400 to me. I’m all for donating to charity, but I’ll probably pass on this deal.

I’m curious to what others think about this. Is anyone out there going to buy one (or should I say two) of these devices?

I saw an article the other day on one of Science Fiction writer John Scalzi’s blogs about how the world almost ended 24 years ago. What happened was that an officer stationed at a secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellite system was monitoring things when an alarm sounded. One of the satellites he was monitoring was signaling the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia.

The officer, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, luckily and correctly decided the alarm was a mistake (it was later found that the satellite in question had picked up the sun’s reflection off the cloud tops and somehow interpreted that as a missile launch) and did not escalate matters.

It’s just so amazing that a system error could have led to a war the likes the planet has never seen (and probably wouldn’t survive). We are all lucky there was a human being there with enough sense to think things through before acting. Technology has improved our lives in so many ways, but we can’t forget that just like humans, technology is not infallible.

If you are reading this, than you are on a computer…or maybe cell phone or smart phone.  But let’s say you are here via a desktop or laptop computer.  Than you are probably wasting a lot of energy.  Don’t worry.  I’m doing it to.  It has almost become a necessary evil these days.

Faster processors.  Bigger monitors.  More powerful video cards.  Those things don’t run on happy thoughts alone.

I’m working on remembering to turn off my computers at night to let it cool off and hopefully save a couple energy cycles.

If you happen to be running Linux, you should go check out the Less Watts website where they are Saving Power with Linux.  The have a tips & tricks on the site.  A lot of them seem to involve turning off processes for things like WiFi and Bluetooth when you are not using them but there are plenty of other tops and some information about who they are and what they do.

If you are using Linux, go check out their site.  If you are not using Linux yet, rush on over here and start downloading.

Technorati Tags: Linux, environment, green, computers

We’re all hanging around in some kind of 3 dimensional space.  Depending on who you talk to, there may be a few more hidden dimensions hanging out there that we don’t quite know how to see or experience yet.

Then there is time.  We are constantly moving forward through space and know that it exists backwards even though we can’t go back to prove it.  That leaves us with basically a 4 dimensional existence (and maybe more if those hidden dimensions are real).

So, I had a thought.  A stupid thought, but fun to place with nonetheless.

What if time is not really a dimension or entity that we pass through but rather a force that pulls us continuously forward.  A one dimensional, constantly applied force.

I’m not much of a math guy anymore so I have no idea how to even play with some of the numbers to see what that would do to some of the basic equations of physics.  I’m sure it would do all sorts of bad things but it is kind of fun to play with absurd thoughts like that once in a while.  And back in the dark ages people created all kinds of funky things to explain the force of gravity before they understood what gravity was.  Maybe 1000 years from now, the future nerds will think about how quaint it was that we couldn’t figure out that time was just some kind of force.

You may have seen this on Digg, but I figured I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it here. The title of the post at Digg was a little bit dramatic (“Critical Excel 2007 bug cripples users“), but the problem is real. The bug doesn’t exactly cripple users, but it is a pretty big flaw in Excel 2007.

The problem occurs when you try to multiply 850 and 77.1. A calculator will tell you the answer is 65,535, but Excel reports the answer is 100,000. Go ahead and try it.

In fact, there are other number combinations that should result in 65,535 that wind up incorrectly displaying 100,000.

Anyhow, as I said at the beginning, this has been reported elsewhere. I just wanted to make sure as many people knew about the problem as possible. Hopefully Microsoft will correct this soon.

I’ve recently gone through an upgrade at work to Office 2007. This is obviously a pretty big change for our users (as you’ve probably seen, the interface is totally different), and we’ve heard our fair share of “feedback”. In the end, though, it was decided at the top we were going to upgrade so that’s what we did. Having gone through the process, I thought I’d share some some thoughts here on how to make the upgrade go smoothly. If you’re thinking that Office is junk and everyone should just use open source (I do use Open Office at home), you might want to stop reading here, because that really isn’t relevant to this post.  Anyhow, here is what I’ve found:

1. Don’t just upgrade to Office on the weekend without notifying any of your users about the switch. People got to work on Monday morning expecting to do their jobs, and were met with an entirely new Office interface. Yes, this really happened.
2. Have a few pilot or beta users test the software. Pick a nice mix of users that use each piece of software in the Office suite. Make sure you choose “power users” as well as people who just use the basics of the software. This should generate a representative sample of questions as well as test any code that might break.
3. Schedule a training session with your users before they are upgraded to just go over some of the basics of the software.  If you are completely new to Office 2007 it’s not immediately evident how to, for example, save a document in Word.  The entire File menu is hidden. The more information people have before you upgrade the less problems you will have and the happier everyone will be.
4. Finally, be ready for questions, comments, and complaints.  As with any change, you will have those who insist things were better the old way.  Just be ready for this and help them work through it.

These are just a few things I’ve noticed from our Office upgrade.  I’m sure there are other tips out there and if any of you have any tips, please feel free to leave them in the comments of this post.

One of my blogs was recently invited into the BlogHer Ad Network. I was surprised to learn that they now allow men into the program but jumped at the chance to join.

I am getting very tired of the PPC model of Google AdSense and have been looking for alternatives. Once I give the program a little more time, I will probably look to switch my other blogs to similar programs.

Here are the things I don’t like about PPC.

Virtually no control of who you are advertising for.
I frequently see ads that lead to MFA landing pages. I’m not really looking to be the bottom rung on somebody’s arbitrage machine. On my parenting blog I talk about IVF and autism. I frequently see ads to sites that I would in know way endorse and definitely wouldn’t want my readers to go to. You can set up a blacklist in AdSense, but new sites are constantly being created and I don’t want to spend all day messing with the blacklist.

No control of how much they are going to pay you.

Sometimes I’ll get over $1 for a click. Sometimes I get 1 cent for a click. Recently the pay per click seems to be getting lower but it will probably pick up again over the holidays. I don’t like how Google refuses to disclose how much they keep for each of the clicks that I generate. I don’t really care what the percentage is, but I would like to know the rules.

Emphasis is on getting visitors from search engines.

The PPC game seems to work best when you get visitors from the search engines. So there is a major focus on writing things that will show up high in the search engines. Personally, I end up having trouble writing when I start thinking about keywords and SERPs. I know that SERPs will still be important for driving traffic, but for me the focus on these things will be a little less important.

Here is what I like about PPM.

Emphasis is on highlighting the ads instead of hoping they blend well.

Companies use CPM advertising because they are working on branding. They might be hoping to get some direct clicks and purchases but they are focusing on the TV advertising model. Get the name brand out there to a targeted audience and when those readers go shopping, hope they remember your name. The best way for this to work is to put the ad front and center and as obvious as possible. No hiding a bunch of text links between the catergories and blogroll in the sidebar.

Rewarded for something going big on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.

I’ve written in the past that I think Google notices traffic spikes and starts heavily filtering AdSense clicks. It wouldn’t bother me so much except it seems like they apply that filter on all of my blogs when one of them gets a spike. Maybe it is just coincidence but if so it is a pretty common coincidence. PPM on the other hand is a little different. Traffic spikes are good. That is more eyeballs being exposed to the branding campaign.

Emphasis is on getting repeat visitors and visitors that want to subscribe to the blog.

Building a community is the reason why blogs are so popular. If we didn’t want repeat visitors we wouldn’t bother allowing comments. Repeat visitors to a PPC program are not as important because they are not the people that tend to click on ads. Repeat visitors are great for a PPM. When they stop to check for replies to their comments and check for new posts, that is page impressions. That is exposure for the company running the ad.

I’ve just been in the BlogHer program for a few days now. We’ll see if I still like it as much in a few weeks but it has made a good first impression.

Technorati Tags: BlogHer, online advertising, AdSense

I watched the Prison Break season premier live on regular commercial filled TV the other day.  Over the last couple months, I watched the first two seasons on DVD since I got a very late start on the show.

We have a baby due on October 19th, so I know there is a good chance that I will miss an episode of Prison Break in the next few weeks.  I don’t have Tivo and I refuse to miss the birth of our daughter because I’m too busy watching TV.

So, I decided to see what my options were for catching up on missed episodes.  Fox offers a free version from their site, but as far as I can tell it is going to have commercials which is fine.  I tried to watch the first episode but it looked like it wanted to install some kind of software for the player and when I tried to click on the link using Firefox, it wouldn’t let me click.  Plus the thought of DRM and commercials just makes me cringe.

I fired up iTunes and noticed they were giving away the first episode as kind of a free trial.  I started downloading.  The download took about an hour but I was busy doing other stuff.  The picture quality even on full screen was at least as good as my analog cable.  And there were no commercials.  Not bad.

If the videos came DRM free, it would be a viable option for me for the whole season at $1.99 an episode.  Since I already have the first two seasons on DVD, I would like a permanent copy of season 3.  DRM can never be a permanent copy because what do we do when Apple decides to go bankrupt or something else causes them to no longer support iTunes.

Still, if I end up missing an episode or two along the way, a download of an individual episode that I can watch commercial free whenever I want during the week is a nice back up plan.

Technorati Tags: iTunes, Prison Break, DRM

I saw this on Gizmodo the other day and just thought it was too cool not to mention. Apparently there is a Sony Vaio concept design that look like the picture below:

When the monitor is turned off, the screen goes transparent. They go on to say that this isn’t an official concept, but now that the idea is out there I’m sure someone will find a way to make it happen. I guess there’s isn’t any real function to be gained from a transparent screen, but it looks really cool.

I’d imagine a machine like this would cost a lot of money, but a guy can dream can’t he?