Missouri Discovers and Uses Technology
The great state of Missouri is finalizing an initiative to use cell phone tracking software to monitor highway traffic.
Sample scenario? I’m so glad you asked:
Driving to work, you notice the traffic beginning to slow. And because you have your cell phone on, the government senses the delay, too. A congestion alert is issued, automatically updating electronic road signs and Web sites and dispatching text messages to mobile phones and auto dashboards.
As you might have guessed the anonymous tracking of people via their cell phones is rubbing the “Big Brother Haters” the wrong way.
“Even though its anonymous, it’s still ominous,” said Daniel Solove, a privacy law professor at George Washington University and author of “The Digital Person.” “It troubles me, because it does show this movement toward using a technology to track people.”
As someone that fights St. Louis Missouri traffic daily, anything that allows for faster updating of traffic data the better. I’m not worried about the government tracking where I’m going because its not exactly a secret where me and my hundreds of thousands of traffic driving friends are going: Home. If Big Brother is spending this much money to find out I’m going home at 5:00 pm tonight then they really could have just saved some money and asked me, or even just looked up my address.
I think its cool. Anyone out there have a problem with this use of technology?
Screw Google VPN, Use iPig
Yeah, Google is rolling out their own wireless network and with it, their own VPN access for all to use as well. But why does everyone have to be all about Google? Give some other nice company a moment of your time.
For example, take iPig, the “iOpus Private Internet Gateway” (I would have stuck with the full name instead of going with the acronym “pig”). iPig lets you use encryption with any internet connection with no configuration. Plus, its free if you join their beta team. Not only that, but if you join the beta team for their “iPig Server” you will get a free Pro version of the software, once it goes gold.
This might be worth checking out if you are the paranoid type…and you are running windows, because there is no mac or linux versions.
Random Blog of the Week #13
I found it appropriate that for today, a day of endless downloads for Google Talk, that this week’s Random Blog is Download Squad. Yeah, its part of the blogging network Weblogs Inc along with 36% of all other blogs in the universe.* But for those of you out there that are download / beta junkies and have to download every new thing out there to see what its like, this is the blog for you. In fact, it seems to be written by a few of you. Everyday there is another page full of things to download and take a gander at and make your Windows Registry more and more dense with crap.
Of course, you could also visit Download Squad to clog up your Preferences folder for your OS X box, because they post more than their fair share of software for the Mac as well. They have it all, and even a nice set of links on the side to filter the page for just a certain OS. Its the little things like those links that gives a blog that extra juice to be Hell Yeah Bitch! .com Random Blog of the Week!
Links: Download Squad
* Note: I might have made that up.
Random Blog of the Week #10
This week’s blog is one that I have talked about, referenced, and have even been referenced on one occasion, so its due time that it becomes one of the “Random Blogs”.
Gadgetopia is one of those websites that I check every morning. It turns out, for my favorite websites, I’m not a huge RSS fan. So Gadgetopia, along with a few others, I check the old fashion way and actually go to the site. What is Gadgetopia? Its a tech blog. It has the standard news, but also some good editorials. For instance, I found the php templating engine, Smarty through Deane and the guys at Gadgetopia. There are more I’m sure, but what am I some weirdo that writes down where I find everything?
Click after jump to read while I really like about Gadgetopia.
Microsoft Adds Stupid Name To Its Stupid Operating System
Congratulations! You don’t have to wait endlessly, and hear about more and more things being cut out of Microsoft’s latest operating system Longhorn! Now you can wait endlessly and hear about more and more things being cut out of Windows Vista.
Thats right, today Microsoft made it official and gave the next version of Windows a real name as opposed to the development name “Longhorn”. Incredible news huh?! Not really. The math is still the same: “Longhorn” = “Windows Vista” = CRAP
Also, Vista is a pretty stupid name if you ask me. It sounds like a crappy hotel name, or something a slum-lord names a development to make it not sound as crappy as it is. Oh wait a minute…I just explained it to myself. I guess the name fits after all.
The Details With Moblogging
So since I have this new phone, which has a pretty nice camera in it, I started to think more about moblogging. I’ve thought about it in the past but my plans always stopped because don’t want to spend the extra money for the messaging and I’m not a real fan of the text-america moblogging site (which is the de-facto moblogging site). I thought about writing my own moblogging software but that still leaves the issues with the messaging.
Also, there is this question: Do I (Hell Yeah Bitch) really need a moblogging solution anyway. Basically it would just be used as a simple way to upload pictures on the fly since I really don’t see myself using it for any sort of detailed blogging. I guess I could use it on a more personal page, something I plan on adding soon. Dan has a moblog with textamerica and I always take a look at that, and he seems to like it an update it regularly, but I’m just not sure if I could keep that up. That and it would make this page more blogg-ish. I don’t know. Have any of you out there have experience with moblogging, building your own moblogging system or if you think Hell Yeah Bitch should even bother with any of this crap.
Maybe we could make something where its a public posting on Hell Yeah Bitch….
It’s Time to Buy a Mac
When Windows XP asks permission to format itself it’s time to put Windows out of it’s misery and buy a Mac. This is a real, honest-to-God error message in WinXP SP2. Click on the photo to enlarge.
It was so very very hard not to laugh while my boss was standing over my shoulder when I was trying to fix this ‘problem’. After some hunting and diagnosing it turns out that it’s most likely physical hard-drive errors that are causing this message.
// wipes tears from my eyes
// my ribs hurt
Getting Through mySQL Upgrading Hell
Prepare yourselves, because I’m about to lay some geek down on you. I haven’t had one of these posts in a while, and honestly if I don’t write this down somewhere I’ll forget what I did and then it will happen to me again. Plus its my site and I’ll write what I want.
Yesterday at work I was trying to get a feature of mySQL (The program that houses the databases for our company and many many others out there today.) going called replication. Replication is a feature that is baked into mySQL and allows a mySQL servers keep track of what is happening on it and then another server to mimic what the first server has done, so as to keep a constant backup of the first, primary, server. The little tutorial I had sounded simple enough: edit a few conf files, sync up the databases, and restart the servers. But of course it wasn’t that easy…mainly because I didn’t realize the servers that I wanted to do this on were 4.0 and 4.1 and the test servers at the office were both running 3.23 but had 4.x databases running in them. Meaning? I had to upgrade the mySQL servers on the local machines. This is where it all went bad…
The Gizmo Project
I’ve never been much into Skype, the latest buzz-generating VOIP client that allows users to make and receive phone calls on their computers. Ok, to be honest, I’ve never used Skype. I used the recently purchased DialPad during my freshman year in college to make calls home some 5 years ago, but since then I haven’t experimented with any personal, computer based VOIP solutions. Why? Mainly because I have a cell phone and I’ve never needed to use those much.
That being said, I the Gizmo Project, brought to my attention today by Laurie at TUAW, has caught my eye. Its mainly the same thing as Skype, but I like their goal, to make VOIP as easy as: “…point, click, talk. For free.” The pictures of their Mac OS X interface seem to back that mantra up (picture after the jump). I’m not really into using the “Call Out” or “Call In” features that with small fees allow you to call out to “real” phones or have people call into your computer via “real” phones, but my interest is peaked enough to download it and set it up.
I’ll be sure to report back to see if the Gizmo Project is worth a look or if I just got suckered in by a pretty interface. Seriously, I have been known to be suckered in by a pretty interface…just look at the picture! Cool huh? And who doesn’t love maps!?
NASA’s Image of the Day
On July 4th NASA will slam a chunk of metal into a comet and see what happens. This kind of stuff is what makes NASA so freakin cool. Some scientist guy went to some Monday morning meeting and asked, “Hey: I just watched that movie Armageddon and cripes that’d be fun to blow up a comet. Anyone think we could do that?”.
NASA posts a new image every day. Some photos are looking at things really far up, others are looking down. There’s over 350 images online, most have ridiculously high-rez versions. For those of you emotionally attached to your newsfeed readers, there’s an RSS feed. Some of my favorites:
Looking at an Aurora Borealis from straight-on
The Great Ecuadorian Pimple Volcano
I couldn’t my favorite image up there, though. Textamerica Linkage.