June 14th, 2009 | by matt | design, links
Jun
14
Found this site while checking out Chris Glass’s site during the Friday LayerTennis. Too funny, too true.
Why?
You are not an unique snowflake so don’t try to make your icon stand out by “de-buttoning” them on the home screen.
No matter how beautiful you are, you are not better than everyone else by removing the border or gloss. You are not special. You are not being clever. You are hindering the overall interface consistency.
Its definitely worth checking out.
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June 12th, 2009 | by matt | cool videos
Jun
12
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June 11th, 2009 | by matt | in the news
Jun
11
The day is finally here…DTV is now the standard!
There was so much build up and ads for the first attempted conversion that the actual conversion seems like a non event. If CNN hadn’t put up the following article, I honestly would have forgotten that it was happening.
In less than 24 hours all full-power broadcast TV stations in the U.S. will flip a switch to stop broadcasting their analog TV signals and will only broadcast TV signals in digital. And for millions who are unprepared, it could mean lights out on their favorite TV shows.
I know what you’re thinking. “We’ve heard this before.” In fact, you’ve probably been hearing about the transition to digital television for the last decade.
You likely started seeing public service commercials last year encouraging you to buy a digital converter box to turn your old analog TV into one that could receive digital signals.
In early February another supposed deadline loomed. And then it didn’t happen. Congress, fearing that too many people weren’t prepared, postponed the switch, and more than 6 million procrastinators were saved.
But now the new deadline of June 12 is upon us once again. And this time it’s for real. President Obama himself issued a statement last week:
“We have worked hand in hand with state and local officials, broadcasters and community groups to educate and assist millions of Americans with the transition…I want to be clear: there will not be another delay.”
So here we are, less than a day away from the final transition. And despite months of public service announcements and more than $2 billion spent by the U.S. government to help people prepare, millions will still face a blank screen when they hit that little power button on their TV remotes starting Friday at 12:01 a.m.
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June 9th, 2009 | by matt | security, sysadmin
Jun
09
Disclaimer: I’m not a Comcast subscriber, but I play one on TV
Comcast has me scratching my head. A friend of mine pointed out the following post on the Comcast goofiness. For a long time now they have been messing with DNS and if you happen to screw up and look up a site that does not exist in DNS, you get the Comcast ad page. Many of the tech savvy folks out there simply got around that by putting up their own caching server or using opendns. I know I did when I found out that Mediacom started messing with DNS like this.
Apparently they have upped their game by routing all DNS traffic, no matter what, to their servers. You have no way around this, you WILL use their servers.
I disagree with the first practice of just having a * domain that has everything mis-spelled go to a certain site of yours. Now that they have taken this to a new level, I think it is quickly climbing up the all time ranks of dangerous and stupid.
Really, dangerous? Well, say I’m a person that has highly questionable morals and decides that the best way to attack a competative ISP is to go after their DNS servers. I could try and do some sort of DDoS. Or, the better, more devious approach is to attempt a DNS cache poisoning on their servers. Not always the easiest, but when done properly can have some pretty devastating effects. Now, I trust that Comcast has employed some top notch admins over there so I highly doubt that they are going to let their guard down here, but we’re all humans. We still make mistakes.
Why is this stupid? Honestly, do you click on the ads on one of these pages? Or do you swear to yourself, type it in correctly or load up google and search for what you really want? It just seems like a lot of hassle to implement and all they are really doing is pissing off their customers. They’re trying to milk every last cent out of them and the customers are not stupid. They know what comcast is trying to do. They’re pissed off and eventually they will leave.
The sad part is, other ISPs have already taken up the first goofy solution that Comcast put in place. Its only a matter of time until more people adopt this new tactic. For me personally, I’m going to smack the crap out of the first person that mentions this as a solution that we should deploy. I set up our DNS servers and I refuse to break the internet. I also have a higher respect for my customers. They’re all intelligent, reasonable, and good looking right?
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June 8th, 2009 | by matt | apple
Jun
08
Well, the keynote was today at noon CDT, let’s see how I did.
1. The standard stats of how well the iPhones and Apps are selling Yup, got those. And they were impressive! Something along the lines of 50,000 apps, over 1 billion app downloads and somewhere in the range of 40,000,000 iPhones and iPod Touches. Nice!
2. iPhone 3.0 will be released with availability right away for iPhones. Once again iTouches will get the $20-$30 shaft. (Seriously Apple, why do you treat them like second class citizens?) Ok, I was off but only by a little. 3.0 will be available on June 17th. That’s pretty damn close in my book. Once again iPod touch users get the shaft. $9.95 I believe was the upgrade price. C’mon Apple, this is bullshit. They paid for the hardware and updates just like everyone else.
3. Snow Leapard will get a July release date with kick ass Exchange/AD support. I was close again. We knew that there would be kick ass Exchange support in Mail, Contacts and iCal. But we have to wait until September for the update. The good thing is, it will only cost us $29!
4. # No netbook…again! The bloggers will cry party foul. Even CNN will get in on how much Apple has disappointed the rumor mill. I was right, no new netbook. Sure new laptops, but none the ultra portable netbook/tablet everyone is drooling over. I haven’t CNN knock them yet, but its coming.
5. One more thing….Steve Freaking Jobs. He comes out, stock jumps 10 points. No Jobs, No ‘One more thing’, and the stock dropped $0.82 today.
Sure, I picked out some easy predictions. But as a mac/iphone user, there is a lot on the horizon that I am excited to get my hands on. Heck, its midnight and I’m working on finishing up the 3.0 GM install on my phone now =)
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