Netflix Hits It Out Of The Park With Xbox360 HD Streaming October 29, 2008
Posted by weare1 in Internet, software.Tags: 360, hd, media, microsoft, movies, netflix, streaming, xbox, xbox 360, xbox360
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Netflix HD on Xbox360
Netflix has apparently hit a home run with it’s new (yet to be released-Nov. 19th) High-Definition movie streaming application for Xbox360’s. HD streaming is clearly the future of media and Netflix is the first one to deliver this long awaited feature. I’ve been using the regular Netflix service for years now and have nothing but great things to say about it, but this is a game changer. Kudus to Microsoft for realizing that this will drive Xbox360 sales perhaps at some cost to their own over-priced movie downloads. Once this hits the Xbox360 will be on a lot of christmas lists, and not just kids either. Netflix has priced this right (free!) with your existing traditonal Netflix movie account and your Xbox360 gold membership. To be fair there is only a limited selection of HD movies (and TV shows) available, but expect this to increase as studios begin to realize revenues from streaming. Netflix pays the studios a very small amount every time you stream their movies, and while Netflix is currently absorbing those costs to drive membership this cannot last. Expect that there will be fees in the future, but for now this is the media delivery system that consumers want.
Super cool music sharing app for the Mac, Mojo January 1, 2008
Posted by weare1 in Internet, OS X, music, software.Tags: music sharing mac mojo
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Super cool music sharing app for the Mac, Mojo.
A Better Internet Experience October 25, 2007
Posted by weare1 in Internet, geek.Tags: web surfing browsing firefox explorer internet organize
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After talking with some friends about the way they browse the internet, I thought I’d share my workflow with you all to help us surf better and faster.
1) get Firefox (any platform)
2) add extensions to Firefox
A) Adblock+, I haven’t seen a web advertisement in two years
B) NoScript, changes default javascript to off, you have to give specific permission to run javascript on websites. Only running javascript you trust has two benefits, first, it’s a huge security improvement, and second, your browsing will be a lot faster.
3) setup your bookmark toolbar to be hierarchical folders.
Firefox’s Bookmark toolbar lets you put often used bookmarks right in your browser bar. What I do is to create large catagories here, like SF, ( I always use abbreviations to preserve screen real estate) Mac, Gadgets, Photo, ect. then make folders for those categories in the bookmark toolbar, like this:
Next always use RSS feeds instead of bookmarks, simply put the subscribed RSS feeds under your new categorized folders. For example put the RSS feed for SFGate under SF. After you’ve got a few RSS feeds under a category you can move your mouse down the column and read all the stories under SF quickly and easily like this:
You can also further organize by using folders within folders, for example, I break down my blog column by people blogs, political blogs, and consumer blogs, use whatever works for you, but keep the titles short to maximize your screen real estate.
I also recommend you regularly use Firefox’s bookmark manager to reorder your feeds regularly, put the best ones at the top. By doing this over time, you can rip through the day’s most important stories quickly, and not miss anything important.
I hope this insight into my web workflow helps you, and I welcome your recommendations for improvement.
The Power of the Internet Community October 19, 2007
Posted by weare1 in Internet, economics, frugality, rant, travel.Tags: internet trip travel
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I’m asking for your help, thats right, you. I’m helping out a buddy trying to get some donations going for the Johnny’s trip project. This is a great cause and he could use a break, help prove the power and generosity of the Internet community at:
AtomFilms – Animator vs. Animation II November 19, 2006
Posted by weare1 in Internet, film, geek, software.add a comment
JungleDisk – Reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3™ October 4, 2006
Posted by weare1 in Internet, OS X, frugality, gadgets, geek, software.2 comments
Hard disks fail. It’s only a matter of time. Backups are a pain in the ass. Finally I’ve found a great solution for this common computing problem. JungleDisk is a cross-platform application to backup your data off-site on Amazon’s S3 storage server cloud. This thing is fantastic, and the economics of the S3 backup service are good. Having your data off-site is essential because any catastrophe could take out your original data as well as your on-site backups. Even RAID is not a good solution because of the locality of the data.
While JungleDisk isn’t perfect, it’s a great start. It has built-in encryption to protect your data, you can backup and access your data as a drive letter disk. This tool is going to help me sleep better at night, and that’s a good thing. I heartily recommend this application and service.
Bogus Pricing Dept. – Incumbents Back Off Fees, Why Not Speakeasy? October 1, 2006
Posted by weare1 in Internet, frugality, rant.add a comment
Speakeasy.net replaced their actual FUSF tax with a line item called “Regulatory Compliance Fee” after the FCC stopped the FUSF fee requirement. This is a bogus way to hide prices, a hidden charge, one which they would not quote to a new customer. SE has been a great ISP for me for the last few years but they are about to lose my business over this stupid issue. They will lose about $86/mo in revenue by defending this bogus $4.16 charge, good business, no, sleazy business.
Shame on Speakeasy for sleazy business practices, shame on the FCC for not protecting consumers. Where are the DA’s for WA and CA? Anyone who wants to form a class action, leave a comment.
broadband help » News » Incumbents Back Off Fees, Why Not Speakeasy? – Fee re-balancing act allows ISP to dodge media bullets
Call For Action – Hold Large ISPs Accountable September 20, 2006
Posted by weare1 in Internet, commentary, rant.add a comment
I write computer security software. One of my programs detects unauthorized brute-force password attempts via ssh and then firewalls offending IPs, and notifies their upstream provider. Increasingly these attempts are launched from infected computers Windows boxes and not malicious individuals. If I had an infected computer and my upstream provider was notified of this fact, I’d sure want to know about it. The reactions from different upstream providers “abuse” addresses (if they even have one) has been very interesting to say the least.
By far European upstream providers have been the best responders. Asian providers have been the worst. A few select US providers have been good about responding (Speakeasy has been the best). For the most part though most of my notifications go without any response. I wonder how many actually notify their respective users.
This week however I saw a new low. abuse@verizon.net has deferred even accepting my notification to them. It’s been 3 days now that my notification to abuse@verizon.net has dwelt in my mailq. Shame on you Verizon, this is likely a high-speed Internet customer with an infected computer who doesn’t know it. His computer is likely causing widespread abuse of the Internet, even clogging up your bandwidth with his virus’es malicious payloads. I find this unacceptable, negligent, incompetent, and bad for the Internet. Ignoring abuse@verizon.net notification of TOS violations is not what even you claim ‘net neutrality’ is.
To any lawyers reading this, there is a large ‘class’ of ISVs who have a large amount of resources that are being abused by ISPs who cannot manage their obligations in the public interest. To any dead-tree reporters reading this, I could explain the terms and concepts involved in a more layman like terminology if needed.
This type of attack was attempted 172 times this year on this server. I can see profiles of certain groups of co-ordinated or programmatic attack attempts by the usernames they attempt to access. This type of attack attempt is becoming more frequent.
To Verizon.net please get your house in order.
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Sep 17 04:59:00 postfix/smtp[23021]: 3B07EC258DF: to=<abuse@verizon.net>, relay=relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11], delay=42, status=deferred (host relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11] said: 450 Requested mail action not taken-Try later:sv22pub.verizon.net (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
…
Sep 20 17:03:19 postfix/smtp[392]: 3B07EC258DF: to=<abuse@verizon.net>, relay=relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11], delay=302702, status=deferred (host relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11] said: 450 Requested mail action not taken-Try later:sv4pub.verizon.net (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
UPDATE: message hard bounced 2 days later and was never accepted for delivery.
Yahoo craps on itself! July 14, 2008
Posted by weare1 in Internet, commentary, rant, software.Tags: crap, my yahoo, myyahoo, yahoo
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