Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

MovableType 3.0: Ouch

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So SixApart revealed the pricing structure for MovableType 3.0 today.

One word.

Ouch.

Dad, Kirsten — we may have to figure something else out for hanscomfamily.com and geekmuffin.com soon. Since I’m running both of you off of my server, I’m not eligible for the free version of MT 3.0, and the various licensing options are a bit rich for my blood.

Reasons the free version won’t work: No support from Six Apart, No access to paid installation service, No access to fee-based services, No promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list, No commercial usage, No more than one author and three weblogs. Plus a few other apparent caveats that are pointed out in the second and third updates to Shelley Powers’ post:

Just caught this. The following are what you get, specifically, with the paid version of MT 3.0 that are conspicuously missing from the free version:

  • Application updates and fixes (not including major upgrades)
  • A guaranteed path to future versions

From Paul Freeman I found out that you have to be registered with TypeKey in order to download the free version.

We were assured that TypeKey wasn’t required for Movable Type. I specifically remember this being said.

I also didn’t realize the physical limitations of the free version–one installation only, and no installation on multi-CPU machines. Most hosted environments are multiple CPU machines. Does this mean even if you are a single author/single weblog user, but hosted, you still can’t use MT?

I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve figured out which direction to head, and how best to go about it.

Update: I have a few more thoughts on this, and will want to clarify my position (I’m not that upset, nor am I going on an anti-SixApart rampage, and besides, thanks to my use of TypePad, I’m quite happy with sending money their way) — I just need to get my skinny butt in gear, so more rambling will have to wait until this evening. Until then, there’s some good points (both pro- and anti-SixApart) in this MetaFilter thread.

iTunes: “Dancesoundtrackmusic (D.S.M.)” by Front 242 from the album Mut\@ge.Mix\@ge (1995, 8:20).

Should’ve bought a new printer

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Well, this is frustrating: after grumbling last night about the high cost of ink vs. the low cost of printers, I’ve since found out that my printer is apparently broken in some way. No matter how many times I reset it, run the diagnostic routines, clean the print heads, or do any of the other little things to coax it into life, it won’t print.

So I go to the Epson website to see if I can get tech support, and see this next to the tech support phone number:

Before you call, be near your computer and printer and have ready your product name, serial number and proof of purchase information.

Me being me, I have every single one of those bits of information except the proof of purchase. I can’t find a receipt anywhere, and probably tossed it along with the packaging after setting up the printer.

So now I’ve blown \$70 on ink, and if I actually want to print anything at home, I need to buy a new printer. I really should have skipped the whole buying ink stage, and just treated it as a “disposable.”

What a waste.

iTunes: “One Good Man” by Joplin, Janis and the Kozmic Blues Band from the album Janis (1969, 4:11).

Mac OS X Word 2004 Demo Trojan

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For the second time in just over a month, panicky news stories are alerting us about a trojan horse attack against Mac OS X. Last time the exploit was disguised as an .mp3 file, this month it’s disguised as a Microsoft Word beta installer.

And for the second time in just over a month, it’s a lot of panic over very little.

The details are simply this: one person downloaded what purported to be an installer for a public beta of Microsoft Word from the Gnutella peer-to-peer filesharing service. This “installer” — actually an AppleScript application weighing in at a hefty 108k — actually deleted the contents of their home directory when ran.

In other words, someone got stupid, got bit by a stupid (and extremely simple), if nasty, practical-joke style hack.

They then ran to MacWorld UK, who contacted Intego (the anti-virus company whose press release fanned the flames of the previous trojan scare) and Microsoft, and MacWorld UK proceeded to write two shining examples of FUD that have since started to run rampant over the ‘net.

It’s very simple, people. Don’t blindly trust every little file you run across on the ‘net, and use a little common sense.

The two best comments I’ve seen on this so far —

From Codepoet:

See, for there to be real security on a computer, a use cannot be stupid. The computer can only do half the work needed t make itself secure; the user must do the other half. The reason fo this is that a computer exists to do things we tell it to do, and if w tell it to, oh, I don’t know, run a Trojan Horse then it will run the Trojan horse. There’s nothing in the system that will say “Hey! This is a Trojan horse!” nor can there be. It’s a program, you told it to run it, and that’s that.

And from Will Parker:

I just don’t know too many people who, when they find an open soft drink bottle full of foamy yellow liquid at a bus stop, drink it to find out if there’s a new Sprite Remix flavor.

iTunes: “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” by Brown, James from the album 40th Anniversary Collection (1969, 3:06).

Why bother buying ink?

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I bought ink for my printer today — an Epson Stylus C82.

The ink — one cartridge each of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — cost me \$70 from Office Depot.

The printer, which isn’t even sold by Epson anymore, can be picked up on Amazon starting at \$39.

The current comparable printer from Epson — the Stylus C84 — can be picked up on Amazon (complete with ink) for about \$84, only about \$14 more than what I paid for the ink.

Why even bother buying ink anymore? Seems to me that it’s practically more cost effective to just buy a printer and use it until the ink runs out, junk it, and buy a new one. Go for a printer that’s a little bit cheaper than the C84, and I’d be willing to bet that it is cheaper to treat them as a “disposable” item.

That’s just flat-out ridiculous.

iTunes: “Masters of War” by Dylan, Bob from the album Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The (1963, 4:34).

Google bits: redactions and spam

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Two interesting Google-related bits today.

Firstly, a paragraph about outsourcing jobs mysteriously disappeared from the Google Weblog at some point during the day. Mark Pilgrim pointed this out (along with /., MeFi, and Hello Typepad) and quite rightly took Google to task for the unremarked changes:

This kind of revisionist history is unacceptable, regardless of who does it. If you don’t want it saved for all time, don’t publish it on the Internet. Putting “blog” on the top of the page does not absolve you of all responsibility.

NetNewsWire‘s “show changes” feature caught the edits, though, so here’s a quick screen capture showing just how the post was reworded:

Google's outsourcing remarks

The second bit is more on the amusing side, and has less to do directly with Google. I got a piece of comment spam earlier that, when I looked at it, made me laugh, simply because in an effort to make it look almost like a real comment, the spammer had mixed links in with a paragraph of real text. It just so happens that the paragraph they chose was one from Google’s website, discussing how pages are indexed after being submitted to Google. I’ve replaced the links with bolded text in the following snippet, of course:

When a URL is submitted to Google, Sex Toy Shop we look for it in our Hotel Booking next crawl. If Low Interest Credit Card you’ve already submitted your Buy Cialis URL, your site could easily Atkins Diet appear in our new index, which will go Nude Celebrity up when the current crawl is completed. However, Online Casinos if no other site links to yours, it Dating Personals may be difficult for our crawler to find Tag Watch you. Conversely, if many sites link to Seiko Watch your page, there is a good Car Hire chance we will find you without your submitting your Register Domain Name URL. Occasionally, websites are not reachable Ladies Watches when we try to crawl them because of Coral Bookmaker network or hosting problems.

It almost makes sense when you read it…

iTunes: “Another One Bites the Dust (Wyclef Jean)” by Queen feat. Free/Jean, Wyclef/Pras from the album Small Soldiers (1998, 4:22).

Manly Pink #1

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That was fast!

Mere hours after I put up my silly little challenge, Matt responded with a ready-to-go stylesheet that’s very pink!

I’ve dropped Matt’s stylesheet in, so in theory, it should be what everyone’s seeing right now. ~~In practice, though, as of 10:30pm May 11th, the new stylesheet doesn’t seem to be getting served. Eventually it should kick in, though, and “Manly Pink #1” should be live!~~ [Okay, the stylesheet finally updated after about half an hour — we’re good to go.]{.underline}

The call for submissions is still open, of course, if anyone else wants to play. Should I get any more concepts tossed my way, I’ll put them up when I get them, and in the meantime, I’ll start looking for a good stylesheet switcher (Javascript or pure CSS [I think that’s possible…]) so that there’s a choice between the old default design or the Manly Pink version(s).

Of course, now I need to go get those t-shirts and put the photos of me wearing pink up….

Update: Now that new designs have started to appear, here’s my original stylesheet: styles-default.css.

iTunes: “We Must Awaken” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album Money (1992, 5:02).

We need pink! Manly pink!

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Anybody want to redesign my site for me?

It’s gonna need pink. Lots of pink. And big, hard, nippleless breasts.

What in the world am I babbling about? Well, quite simply, I think that Shelley has a good point about some aspects of the Blogger redesign…

Speaking of looks, if you read Phil’s comments, you’ll see I was not happy about Zeldman’s Ms. Moto and Mr. Moto templates. The one for Mr. Moto shows a classic gray, very professional looking weblog with a photo of a building in one of the posts. However, the one for Ms. Moto is all in purple/pinks, and shows a photo of a Barbie doll in the example post.

What is the message from these templates? That men have professional looking sites, while women favor pink and dolls? I am surprised at an experienced man like Zeldman perpetuating this type of stereotype.

As Mark Pilgrim said in Phil’s post, yes men and women may both like pink sites. I don’t have a problem with pink; it was the gender association (not to mention the doll–was that an accident?) that grabbed me. There were other templates that also featured pink, or rose, but none of them made an association with a gender through the name.

No big deal you say? By itself, no. But after three years of girlism and baring breasts as fund raisers, not to mention being told time and again how ladies are supposed to act in this environment, and how women webloggers only write about home while men write about politics and tech–I am weary of how much weblogging promotes stereotypes. I stopped pointing out how woman don’t seem to get the same notice as men in weblogging when it comes to writing in order not to perpetuate a stereotype; the least others can do is not make associations between female bloggers and Barbie dolls.

Mark “The Pink” Pilgrim has hinted that he’ll probably do a redesign, perhaps based on pink and dolls. Dolls with big, hard nippleless breasts. If so, and I see several men sporting the new Ms. Moto look, I will be less inclined to be critical.

So, guys show me that Ms. Moto is genderless and protect Zeldman’s honor at the same time. If you have Blogger, pick that template, but don’t forget to add in a doll or two. If not, then do something comparable in your own toolset. Then I’ll know pink and dolls aren’t just ‘girly’ things, they’re also for manly mans. We’ll have a contest. Maybe Mark and Zeldman will judge.

I am so up for this. However, I’m not really that much of a designer (especially when it comes to using graphics or color), and I just dealt with the frustration of a mere tweak of this design, and I’m not terribly sure I want to start from scratch again.

So, a challenge.

If anyone out there is crazy enough to give me a design to use, I’ll use it. In fact, if I even get people telling me that they’ll work on it, I’ll go down to the local Hot Topic, blow a little money, and then send the prospective designers pictures of me to incorporate in the design (even though I’m conspicuously missing the big, hard nippleless breasts) in my 14-eye Doc Marten boots, black Utilikilt, and each of the following three shirts: the pink skull, “Pink is the new black“, and “Tough guys wear pink“.

Anybody up to this? Should anyone actually want to tackle this, I only have a few simple requests:

  1. I’d like to keep the basic structure I have set up right now: two columns, main content on the left, sidebar on the right, main content appearing first in the HTML, post metadata just underneath the title, etc.
  2. Take a look at my current source code and CSS to see how I’ve been doing things so far — while that shouldn’t limit what you come up with, it’ll at least give you a good idea of how I think when I piece things together.
  3. [Update:]{.underline} Now that new designs have started to appear, here’s my original stylesheet: styles-default.css.

And really, that’s about it. I’m up for just about anything, and I’ll gladly work with someone to make sure that their ideas and design drop in here without too many issues.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can offer for compensation, other than the general fun of doing it. If you come up with something that might work as repayment, though (aside from the obligatory “Design by…” link on the page), feel free to suggest it, and we’ll see what can be worked out.

iTunes: “Got Me Wrong” by Alice in Chains from the album Sap (1992, 4:12).

Semacode

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Semacode for this website

Here’s a fun little tech toy that I discovered thanks to Jonas: Semacode, a two-dimensional barcode that encodes a URL in the matrix. With the newer breed of camera phones and the right software installed, the phone can read the barcode and automatically open the URL in the camera’s embedded web browser.

For a long time computer scientists have been looking for a cheap, inexpensive way to create a gate between the real world and virtual world of the internet. Semacodes provides such a solution. By means of special symbols, printable by anyone on any printer, and special software, available for camera phones, connections can be built on a wide scale in a totally decentralized fashion.

A semacode is a small symbol that encodes a standard, web-oriented URL. The URL is embedded into a two-dimensional barcode along with error correction information. When the semacode reader software snaps the barcode, it launches the embedded URL on whatever web browser is available.

Software to read the Semacode barcodes is already available on the Semacode website for Nokia 3650/7650, 3600/3620/3660, 6600 or 6620 camera phones.

There are all sorts of potential uses for this. Some of the following examples come from the Semacode website, some from Jonas, and some from me:

  • Bus stop transit information: Grab the Semacode posted on a bus stop sign and go right to the page listing the bus schedule, or if a system such as NextBus is being used, get up-to-the-minute information on when the next bus will be by.
  • Tourist orientation: Post Semacode stickers at landmarks or intersections pointing to MapQuest maps or Yahoo Get Local pages to help people instantly find out just where they are and what hotels, restaurants, or attractions might be close by.
  • Ticket sales: Include a Semacode on an event poster, newspaper, or magazine advertisement that links to the online ticket sales website.
  • Social networking I: Put the Semacode for your personal website on the back of your business cards.
  • Social networking II: Create a webpage detailing just what you’re looking for in a potential mate and then make a shirt with the Semacode pointing to that page prominently displayed to wear to the bar.
  • Advertising I: I’m thinking seriously about updating the designs on the shirts I’m selling through CafePress to include the Semacode for this site (or for a yet-to-be-constructed page specifically for the shirts) on the back of each shirt, logo-style.
  • Advertising II: Include the Semacode for a club or business on the flyers or advertisements.

I’m sure there are a lot more possibilities here.

Of course, the really ironic thing about all of this is that not only do I not have a cell phone, but I have no intention of getting one, as the fool things annoy me to no end (though, really, it’s not the phones themselves that annoy me as how incredibly rude cell phone users can be), so aside from slapping my Semacode around, I can’t really take advantage of the technology. That doesn’t make it any less interesting to me, though.

iTunes: “Dragula (Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare)” by Zombie, Rob from the album American Made Music (1999, 4:37).

This is just goofy

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Okay, so when I had to reinstall my system the other day, I ended up with an older version of iPhoto (2.0). Since I picked up the iLife package a while back with iPhoto 4, which changed the library format, iPhoto 2 couldn’t get into my photo library. Not a big deal, all I need to do is reinstall the iLife package.

Which was where things got odd.

The iLife package comes with two install discs: a DVD that includes iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, and GarageBand, and a CD that has everything except GarageBand (for those poor shmoes stuck in the dark ages of computing). Me being just as organized as ever (in other words, not at all), I wasn’t sure where the install DVD was. No biggie, GarageBand shouldn’t have been touched by the system update (since it isn’t part of a standard system install), so I figured I’d just install the minimal iLife package from the CD installer.

Popped in the CD, launched the installer, and then got this:

iLife won't install from CD

What?

I’d be pissed if it weren’t so damn funny. That’s just goofy, though — because I have a DVD drive, I have to install from the DVD? The install CD is entirely useless to me? Honestly, that’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen from Apple to date.

I found the DVD, though, so I should be good to go from here.

iTunes: “Gangster Tripping” by Fatboy Slim from the album Go (1999, 5:19).

Custom kids, made to order

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How would you feel if a major reason for your existence in the world, possibly the primary reason for your conception, was to act as a genetically guaranteed donor to cure your older sibling of a disease?

Kind of weird to think about.

Sure, this kind of thing has been done for years, just without the benefit of Gattaca-style genetic screening to ensure a compatibility match, but it was a far more private matter. With the news stories surrounding these more recent children, how might they feel if somewhere down the line, when they’re old enough to understand, what if they somehow find out that they are one of these kids?

“Well, we weren’t planning on having another child, but then your brother got sick….”

Better or worse than finding out you’re adopted?

What if there was any favoritism — real or perceived — in how the two children were treated before this aspect was discovered? If the older child (the recipient) was seen as the “favorite”, how much could that affect the younger child’s perception of themself? Or if the younger was perceived as the “favorite”?

That could easily be enough to screw you up for a long, long time.