Fight for Yer Right to Time-Shift

Sat 8 Jun 200212:14 PM

This is encouraging: “ReplayTV customers represented by the [Electronic Frontier Foundation] have filed a lawsuit against the entertainment industry to protect their rights to skip over commercials and record television programs for later viewing using digital video recorders.” I’d like to see a series of publicity-damaging consumer lawsuits against the entertainment industry on all manner of digital fair use issues.

Looking for Language

Fri 7 Jun 200204:34 PM

I just spent half an hour looking for a tutor in the New York City area to help me brush up on my sub-conversational Vietnamese skills. And I found nothing. Anyway, if you’re well-versed in conversational Vietnamese and you think you want to earn some money teaching it to me, send an email to desk@subtraction.com.

Numerology

Wed 5 Jun 200207:23 PM

Citibank’s credit card division has a potentially great product in Virtual Account Numbers. Rather than use your real Citibank card number for online transactions, customers use a little application to randomly generate a virtual number that can be used instead. The numbers are good for one use only, so once the transaction is complete, they expire and your real card number is still safe. It’s a great security idea.

Pocket XP

Tue 4 Jun 200205:30 PM

Doing Windows

Mon 3 Jun 200207:01 PM

My new custom-built HP Pavilion 701 is great, and I’m very impressed by Windows XP. I had some inscrutable problems with Outlook today, and after scratching my head for a while I decided to try XP’s System Restore feature, which allows users to easily “remove any system changes that were made since the last time you remember your system working correctly.” I hit a couple of buttons, and one restart later, I had reverted my system to its state from this past Saturday, and the Outlook problem was cured. This is brilliant stuff. Of course, it would’ve been more brilliant if my original problems with Outlook hadn’t ever happened.

Who What Where

Mon 3 Jun 200212:46 AM

Painted from Random Access Memory

Fri 31 May 200207:17 PM

Six Pack

Thu 30 May 200206:58 PM

Bremsstrahlung Recordings has a nifty Web site designed by Fällt that emulates the old System 6 Macintosh operating system. It’s a slavish imitation, actually, which is pretty amusing, though it would’ve been a home run if they’d done it in Flash and given the interface some real responsiveness.