If you search YouTube (iOS app, at least) using a link to a video or the unique (approximately) twelve characters from the URL, it should always give the correct video as the top search result. It doesn’t.
Categories
Category: PMO
Pisses Me Off
Categories
Wemo App: Dark Mode
I’m up in the middle of the night. I need to walk to another room of the house. I go to use the Wemo app to remotely turn on lights, so I don’t wake my wife by turning on the lights in our bedroom. Unfortunately, when I open the app, I’m greeted with a whole screen of white. It hurts my eyes, and my wife stirs in her sleep. Dark mode is nothing new, and a light switch app is all about keeping things light or dark at the appropriate time.
Bonus rant: Wemo switches need a dark mode themselves. When they’re off, they still have a white glowing circle on them. That’s fine for common areas of the house to make them easier to find in the dark. But in the bedroom, I need a setting to turn that light on the switch off, so I can sleep in a dark room. My workaround has been white electrical tape to cover it, but that’s a ridiculous solution.
Categories
Snooze Interval
It drives me nuts that the iPhone snooze interval is 9 minutes.
- How did they get this number?
- Why can’t you set it yourself?
“How to nap” (Boston.com) seems to show an optimal minimum time of 20 minutes, so that’s what I’d like it to be. But it would be even better if everyone could go to Settings and set it to any number they want.
Categories
Auto Question Mark?
Have I posted this yet?
On iOS, when you press two spaces after a word, it puts a period to end the sentence. Why doesn’t it add a question mark automatically when the sentence starts with a question word (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How)? In most cases it would be correct, and in others it should be easy to detect if a period is correct instead.
Reasons Adobe drives me crazy:
1. Every time Flash updates, it won’t remember that I want to be notified of updates but not automatically install them.
2. After every Flash update it opens my browser automatically without being asked to. Opening a browser is my job.
3. This took me over six months to diagnose: http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/acrobat-failed-launch-30-days.html You’d think there’d be an automatic update for this.
4. Like most big companies, there’s no way to get this message to someone who will do anything about it.
Categories
Etymology Guess: Loo
I haven’t googled this yet to see if it’s true, but (I was going through old notes and found my thought process) I wonder if this is the etymology of “loo” for restroom:
l’eau = water (in French)
water closet = bathroom (in UK)
“loo” = bathroom
(update: It looks like the source is unknown, but there are two guesses that are similar to mine: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=loo)
I’m a Magnatune lifetime member. First thing I wanted to know was how to login to the iPhone app, so I don’t have to hear the spoken message at the end of each track (placed there because every song is free to hear for non-members). It took me a bit, but it’s mentioned on a blog post about the iPhone app: Magnatune iPhone app (but not on Magnatunes page for the app).
Categories
Bandwidth Caps Are Deceptive
![[truck with the word "Scam" on it]](/files/2046188221_dbd7640faf_m.jpg "Data Caps Are A Scam")
joetron2030’s suggested that this may lead to tiered service. This could be a step in the right direction–but not with data caps. I understand the ISP wanting to manage the network, but they shouldn’t advertise 10+ Mb/s as the speed when we’re really only allowed 0.761 Mb/s to stay within the cap for the month.
It’s okay with me if they offer different speeds, not different caps (and they better not even think about metering per bit). With the 250 gigabyte cap, that’s a less-than-1-megabit-per-second connection. Advertising 10+ is very deceptive. With a 10-megabit-per-second connection, we’ve paid for over three thousand gigabytes per month (edit 8/3: even if it’s 5-megabit, that’s over 1,500 gigabytes per month). 250 is less than 1% of 3,000.
If ISPs really want to worry about network congestion, then they should limit the speed of the “more than 99% of customers” who stay within the 250 gigabyte cap. Otherwise those customers are bursting at high speed at random intervals. I doubt that’s good for the health of the network. It’d be better to trickle spread their data use evenly through the month. But let them know they are getting a (less than) 1 megabit connection, and charge them far less than you’re charging now.
I think the price now is still too high for the (about) 10-megabit connection, but if ISPs introduced the lower priced 1-megabit connection, then I could see them keeping the current price for the current speed (but repeal the data cap!).
Edit (8/1) with this waking thought: You should make me an ally instead trying to squeeze me out because I am an example of your future customers. Soon we’ll all stream audio and video, back up our media collections to the cloud, download apps, patches, and even OS ISOs, and other yet-to-be-thought-of innovative uses of the internet. If you want us to pick you as our ISP for this (instead of completely abandoning you, so you go out of business), then it’s time to start showing you value all 100% of your customers.
In my top 100 things that piss me off is Adobe. I think their motto is “Mistreat Your Users.”
I found hundreds of pages on this issue, but only one full solution (and it wasn’t from Adobe) to remove Adobe Bounjour installed with CS3 which causes network problems. Thank you to Raine at TechArena Community. Reposted here just in case:
Categories
Dramatically Lower Bandwidth Cap
OMG, it’s been six months since I posted. Too, too busy.
I got this in the mail this week:
The cards says:
Dear EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast customer:
Effective July 1, 2010 the terms of service for the EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast service will be changed to include a 250 gigabyte monthey data usage cap for all EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast customers. Monthy data usage is the amount of data (for example, photos and videos) that you send, receive, download and upload during a month. It is our experience that the majority of cusomers never come close go using 250 gigabytes of data in a month.
To assist you, we created a web page specifically to answer your questions concerning this new policy. Please refer to the page listed below for more information and thank you for being an EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast customer.
http://support.earthlink.net/comcast250
This is bullshit ridiculous. There was already a per-month data cap. It was the speed I pay for times the seconds in the month. With a 10Mbps connection and about 2,629,743 seconds in a month, that’s about a (natural) 2,500 gigabyte cap.
I should be able to use every advertised bit in the 10 Mbps that was advertised — every single second of the day, not just some times during the day. If that means you restrict the advertised speed, then that’s fair, but you’re advertised bandwidth is currently deceptive: it’s about 10 Mbps — except you’re not allowed to actually go that fast.
What should I do — divide the month into seconds and put my own bandwidth limiter on my router, so I don’t hit the cap? Again, bullshit ridiculous.
Also, if “the majority of customers never come close go using 250 gigabytes of data in a month” then why is a cap even needed? Sounds like a shitload whole lot of customers aren’t using all the product for which they’re paying.
Categories
Backup Software
I want backup software that does incremental backups at the file level. It might waste more space, but it would be easier to retrieve lost files. It should make a folder for each date-time (YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS) it finds a changed file (continuous backup). It should just store complete files (not a single giant backup file). It should probably also have an XML log / registry in the root of the backups to air a Backup Browser in showing a reconstituted view.
I could then look at the drive and see a \BackUps folder in the root of the drive for all my backuos, a \C folder for files on the C:\ drive, and then \YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS folders for each backup. I could then dig into \BackUps\C\YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS\ or \BackUps\D\YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS\ (D:\ drive, etc.) and fish out any file I needed without using backup software to retrieve the file.
Anyone could then build a Backup Browser (open source or proprietary) to let the backup be browsed reassembled since only the first backup would have all the files. it could look like Time machine’s restore function, or it could look like a Fonder/Explorer window with a date control to look at the file system state on a given date-time. But even without the Backup Browser, you could still get the files.
Windows 7 Backup and Restore (built in backup), Acronis True Image Home 2010, and Rebit, discussed in “Managing Backup: Three Software Solutions Compared : Backup Done Right – Review Tom’s Hardware“, all seem like good options, but if I understand correctly, all require software to look at the files.
If backup software used my standard scheme for storing backups, it would still be helpful to have software to look at the backups in a more meaningful way, but it would not be required — the files would just be there on the drive.
If you want your backup encrypted (which is a weird idea to me, since retrieving the data — the whole point of a backup — could be hampered by encryption), then it would be okay for it to work in the TrueCrypt way. Files are still accessed at the root of a drive, but that drive is an encrypted container somewhere else. Better yet, it could be an encrypted partition. Just make sure the OS and user transparently see it as unencrypted.
Categories
VMWare could be so cool
I’ve now paid for VMWare Fusion 2 and for an upgrade to 3. It seems the upgrade added a few minor new features. It mostly seemed like bug fixes (like making Windows 7 work properly).
Two big bugs that haven’t been fixed are the problem that Ubuntu’s visual effects won’t work, and when you mouse down to a hidden OS X Dock, it won’t pop up when you’re running full screen.
Categories
horrible etrade baby commercials
I cannot wait until the day I never have to watch etrade baby commercials ever again. Makes me want to swear to express how blanking stupid the commercials are. I can’t even give a critique. They’re just stupid. So stupid they’ve lost my business.
(note to self) Remember: never do business with them.
Categories
iPhone Features (leftovers)
In my iPhone Features Sunday, post on February 22nd, 2009, I gave a list of my top choices. I have to say, I think that they’re past the point of pushing normal users to jailbreak their iPhones. I have no need to jailbreak, but I do like that there’s a way to make sure my hardware is really mine. (The fact that Apple controls which software I’m even allowed to install is just not right.)
Before I get to the leftover features that I still didn’t get, I have something to gripe about. I’m happy to hear that MMS will be included in my unlimited messaging — I’ll finally get closer to my money’s worth (AT&T’s Text Messages Cost $1,310 per Megabyte). I am more than unhappy about AT&T sitting around trying to decide how much to charge me per month to turn on a feature that’s built into the iPhone: tethering. I already pay for data. It’s unlimited, but it’s also capped at 5GB per month (which is a whole matter altogether). If I want to route that data through my phone and to my notebook, then I should just be able to do it.
This leads to the leftover features I still want:
- Not just tethering, but iPhone Access Point to share 3G to notebooks
- iPhone Play nice with Mozilla (Firefox) — let Mozilla write a browser for iPhone
- iPhone Route calls over WiFi when cell signal is poor
- iPhone More live updated icons
- iPhone Unlimited Pages for Apps — especially now that I can launch apps using Spotlight
I think that we’d end up with a healthier economy if we’d simplify the tax code to just one law.
It should simply be:
For any sale by an American (or American Company), the local government gets X percent, the state government gets X percent, and the federal government gets X percent.
That way the burden of taxes is only on the seller. Income and property (and all other forms of) taxes would go away.
If we wanted to protect our industries, we could still use tariffs for foreign sales, so people wouldn’t be encouraged to just buy foreign.
We’d need a force of people (maybe just use the IRS income tax force) to monitor businesses, and leave it up to individuals to be honest (or audited). The biggest sellers would be easiest to monitor, and would bring in the most tax revenue.
This would encourage saving money because keeping money wouldn’t be taxed. No one would loose their farms or houses from taxes any more. It would encourage bartering (though, if that caught on too much, especially between corporations, maybe bartering would be taxed, too). Giving money would not be taxed because whenever that gift was spent, it would then be taxed.
It would take adjusting to create new routes for money to arrive at the programs currently funded by taxes, but after that was ironed out once, it would be a cleaner, easier to monitor system.
Categories
iPhone Features
I recently got an iPhone and I have found that there are many features at iPhone Features (petitions) that I would really like. The great part is all you need to provide is your Name, City, and Country — Email Address and Comments are optional.
Here are some of my top choices:
- iPhone Play nice with Mozilla (Firefox)
- iPhone Route calls over WiFi when cell signal is poor
- iPhone More live updated icons
- iPhone Unlimited Pages for Apps
- iPhone Access Point to share 3G to notebooks (tethering)
- iPhone Email Search
- iPhone Forward phone numbers trough SMS
- iPhone Landscape Keyboard should be available in all apps
- iPhone MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
- and of course iPhone Cut and Paste
If Apple doesn’t want people jailbreaking their iPhones, then they need to hurry up and implement some of these features.