Mac +/- for Macs & Mac users, plus or minus, more or less.

I've got a Blackberry 8830 through work, so I can become the expert on Blackberry for the university.

Never used one before. Never had any smart phone before, though I used a Palm for years, and a Newton before that.

I really, really hate this phone. If I hadn't purchased an iPod Touch a few weeks before getting the work phone, I'd probably only dislike it. But I have seen the Promised Land of interfaces, and Rim could not find it with a map.

Documentation is very scarce in the box. I am a tech guy, I can spend time learning it, because it is my job to do so. But it has left me completely convinced that the typical mode of set up for this device is for the user to hand it to his or her IT person and say "Make this work."

Mark Space's Missing Sync syncing is unreliable and very very slow. And it is insulting that we have to buy software to make it work at all--the free from Rim pocketmac sw was a complete failure.

Reading anything on the tiny, overly busy screen is a pain.

It comes pre-configured with an (in)convenience button that goes off randomly, leaving my pants repeating "Say a command!" at random times.

Oh, and it's broken now, with a scroll button that only goes up, left and right. No, I didn't drop it or spill anything on it. Hopefully I can get that fixed at Alltel tonight.

Blech.

Technorati Tags: Alltel, Tech, UVa

Roughly Drafted does some great tech analysis.

In this article, they share some fascinating stuff I didn't know.

You should read the whole article, especially if you're considering rolling out an Exchange server in an enterprise environment. Say, a major public university for example.

One excerpt:

Users can easily fill up a 2 GB mailbox with saved email attachments on Exchange. The Standard Edition of Exchange only allows a 16 GB mail database, which can easily be filled to capacity by a little as 8 users.

Exchange can become a catastrophic nightmare to support once users start thinking of their Exchange mailbox as a file share alternative which handily sorts their huge attached files by date and message thread.

Technorati Tags: Tech, UVa

Technorati Tags: Funny, Tech

The West Cafeteria in the Hospital makes some disturbingly addictive chicken fingers, but the pizza is terrible. Even when I put it in the toaster to reheat and crisp up, it tasted of bitter cheap cheese.

I miss Bambina's Pizza.

Technorati Tags: Around Grounds, UVa, Virginia

I'll bet you never read the "terms and service" agreements that almost everyone forces on you before you use their product.

If you're considering using the Amazon Unbox movie service, be glad that the folks at Boing Boing have taken the trouble to read and analyze it for you:

Boing Boing: Amazon Unbox to customers: Eat shit and die

For example, here's his analysis of their "privacy" terms:

Amazon says it respects your privacy, but this clause tells the real story. Click "I agree" and you've just signed away permission for Amazon to wiretap all of your viewing habits, and to search your entire hard drive continuously and report back on all the software you've installed. The entertainment industry can produce a blacklist of legal software that it just doesn't care for -- say, software that lets you take screenshots, or screen-movies -- and refuse to allow your movies to run if you've installed it. In other words, this clause lets Hollywood specify how you must configure your PC.

Like Cory Doctorow, I'll never ever buy one of Unbox's movies. At least not while these terms are in place. You shouldn't either.

Technorati Tags: Tech

Malware authors aren't dumb--they are evil, but not stupid.

They test their wares just as legit programmers do.

Here's the result.

Technorati Tags: Macintosh, Tech

Much to my eternal shock, last week my appeal of a UVa parking ticket was actually upheld. My confusion comes from the capriciousness of it--last time I appealed, it was for exactly the same reason and they rejected my appeal. Both times, I got a ticket even though my E3 tag was visible on the dashboard.

I'm not complaining this time, but it only improves my trust of P&T (and officer 210, whoever that is) a little bit.

Technorati Tags: UVa

Technorati Tags: Macintosh, DRM

The clinic tables at Clemons aren't big enough.

How is it that a Third Year Engineering student doesn't know basics of file management? I'm talking about things like whether music files are bigger than Word docs, or if pictures take up lots of room, or if kilobytes are used to measure one kind of file, while megabytes are used to measure another. I hope the student wasn't in Computer Engineering.

There are apparently two kinds of laptops out there among the population. I'll bet you think I mean Macs and PCs. No.

I mean Brand or Nearly New and Filthy Dirty. Every laptop that came in was clearly either brand new (in one case, the guy said he had just opened the box to bring it to the library) or just plain covered in, at least dust, and and worst, what appeared to be a screen coating of long dried smeared snot.

Why do big screen Dells have their system fonts set so small that they're around 4 point?

It astonishes me that people come to the laptop clinics:

without their power adapter
to ask questions about their desktop computer
at 5 minutes before the end of the clinic
without their laptop.

I've had Sprint's DSL for a week or two now. It works pretty well and was surprisingly easy to set up.

I just got around to reading the terms of service that come with it. (Which, by the way, it is possible to ignore the "Accept" button the service sends you to, close the window and just start using the service.)

Check out this provision:

(a) [snipped stuff about firewalls & sharing] When using the Service, you may not:

[snipped stuff that isn't too egregious]

(4) post, publish, transmit, reproduce, distribute or in any way exploit any information, software or other material obtained through Services for commercial purposes;

Now, I'm a tech, not a lawyer, but it seems to me this means I can't use the DSL connection (the "Services") to do anything "commercial" with anything ("information, software or other material") that I get via the DSL.

Soooooo, that suggests to me that if a client of my side business sends me an email asking me to work for her next week, and I reply positively, then I'm in violation of the terms of service. Because I've used Sprint DSL (the services) to obtain the "information" that I intend to use for "commercial" purposes.

Suppose I wanted to download a bunch of Apple software updates and burn them to disk so I can take it to a client who has dial up? Another violation.

How about updating my commerical web site, Different Computers? Violation.

I guess I'm a big violator.

And Sprint's lawyers and managers are fools.