Anti-fun / Computers / Home — 2 comments
15
Apr 11

An obscure discovery about using the xbox 360 as a windows extender

Gentle FTTA reader, if the title of this post means notta thing to you, you probably did not arrive via a search engine. Hopefully though, you’ll find some enjoyment from my colorful commentary on the journey of one man on a quest to watch Star Trek The Next Generation episode rips on his living room TV.

For the rest of you, anonymous tip seekers scouring the internets for possible solutions to an utterly frustrating and overly generalized error message, this info may help you.

“Connection Failure: The Xbox 360 could not connect to the Windows Media Center PC. Turn your Xbox 360 off then on again, and try to connect again.”

I attempted a plethora of configuration tweaks, tips and “fixes” to the windows firewall and registry, as gleamed from search engines google and bing*. All were no help until I stumbled upon this question “do you by chance have a fingerprint reader on this PC?”

Had I not spent hours learning how exactly Windows Media Center (WMC) “Extends” itself to the xbox 360 I would have completely overlooked the question. But since I now knew the ins and outs, *BOOM*, it became perfectly clear.

In short, the extender is simply a remote desktop connection to the single WMC application. And the stupid fingerprint reader on my Windows 7 ultimate laptop was preventing the login. Wasn’t there any error logs reporting (or hinting at least) this simple authentication failure in the windows event viewer? Nay!!

So finally, the solution: uninstalling the AuthenTec fingerprint software/driver (mine was provided by Lenovo for my X200). I lose the ability for fingerprint logins – at this point, SO what.

WMC via xbox 360!

Many hours were “invested” in troubleshooting this issue which could have easily been avoided given some better error reporting on either the xbox or windows side.

The real kicker is that I pretty much did this to myself; I must be a masochist. There is free software out there, like tversity, that do essentially the same thing for free. FREE. But since I have all this paid Microsoft shtuff (regardless if whether & what I actually paid…) I ought to use it, right!?

Anecdotes / Anti-fun — 2 comments
26
Mar 11

The Best Buy Credit Card Scam

First off, the term “scam” should be taken with a grain of salt, hopefully one of many stuck to a margarita glass. Secondly, what HSBC Best Buy has going can definitely be termed a racket.

The Pitch: Open a Best Buy Credit Card and pay no interest 24 months!!

The typically skeptical Consumer thought process: Hmmm, free financing; what’s the catch? OK, so this is actually an HSBC bank credit card, sure… nothing else jumps out as odd in the immediate fine print.

This seems ideal for a large purchase like that washer and dryer we so desperately need. I’ll read the minimum payment from my first statement and put this baby on auto-pay. Score.

The reality:

  • Month 1-6: minimum payment $10
  • Month 7: minimum payment $23; auto-paid $10 minimum payment insignificant; $35 late fee assessed
  • Month 8: minimum payment $36; oh shit, what’s all this now? LATE FEE? WTF!

According to a HSBC representative, “a new law was passed in January and you received a notice in the mail about your minimum payment.” To date, I have yet to find said notice. I did however, find the exact same claim from a blog post in The HSBC Monitor, “there was a new law that passed in January that requires them to charge a higher percentage of the balance” which, interestingly enough was posted in 2006.

Eventually, the representative passed me to a “manager” and the late-fees were waived. All was ok, I was alright even though I had spent hours on the phone talking to human script reading machines. I Had Won. So, I figure OK – boost the auto-pay amount to $30, well above that old minimum and I’ll be good. Then *two* months go by.

Minimum payment: $46. Auto pay shy of $16. Late fee bitch +$35.

Conundrum: call HSBC, waste hour(s) pitching how wrong they are to charge this fee. Or, pay it, stfu and take it.

Moral of the story: Signing up for a free financing offer means to mentally prepare to add that to your monthly checklist. Do not rely on auto pay to “beat the system”. Pay close attention to each and every message sent from the company providing that “free” credit. They Will Try To Screw You out of some money.

News — 1 comment
23
Feb 11

The Billboards are Alive, Judging and Profiling You

These billboards, in malls and other large public places, will chat at you with dynamically selected advertisements most relevant to “you”. How? Based on a new “smart” camera tech NEC has developed to make an advertiser’s wet dream come true.

The billboard can make instant assumptions about the buying tendencies of passer-byers based on physical characteristics such as body build, gender and age. It could easily and might make racial profiling assumptions as well though the ramifications of such would be heralded by civil rights activists.

It could get interesting: by monitoring and tracking which stores you enter and what you come out with, depending on what you do or don’t buy, ad hoc discounts or bonuses could instantly be offered. An omni-present intelligence inventing ways on the fly to encourage patrons to dump more money.


It’s happening, just like in the Minority Report

While rather different technology than acute audience targeting on the internet, it has a similar gut privacy wrenching reaction.

Internet Technology — 1 comment
06
Feb 11

Coincidence or Acute Audience Targeting in Ads

Bargin and Luxury in an Ad pair

Targeting the Rich and Thrifty

Why did these two ads appear side by side as and when they did? Could they possibly have known I recently visited both slickdeals (thrift) and sites containing Mercedes (wealth) content?

Straight out the gate, this was likely coincidence. Disclosure: I work deep in the underbelly of internet advertising, and specifically on the audience segmentation and targeting technology that powers modern day website ad serving. The sheer amount of information exchange and processing required to match this up in-real-time in a cohesive and sale-able way is not (yet) happening.

Google is certainly close. And the more I think about it, the more I think this wasn’t coincidence at all. All the disparate information necessary to make the map is in their arsenal. They could have made this match.

A few factoids feeding the not-coincidence conclusion:

  • I primarily use Chrome
  • I am signed in to a Google account
  • I use Google search often
  • most every blog and site has Google Analytics
  • Ads were served by Google (adsense)

What do you think? Have we entered the era where even remnant banner ads speak specifically to our interests and tenancies?

Anecdotes / Computers — Leave a comment
28
Jan 11

Getting The Most out of Tools & Toys

I’ve always enjoyed wading through the underrated benefits-pool of owning just-sub mainstream products. My most recent two are an Android phone and a DLink file server (NAS). I left both “stock” for at least a month after purchase, satisfied with the performance provided out of box.

The devices, stock visuals:
* Samsung Epic 4G

* DLink DNS 323

Then the itch – spurred on by (profuse) reading of tweaks and hacks each device affords, that each can do more than what they do now – becomes unbearable. To scratch would appease but not without risk; each device will likely be void of warranty. Worse still is potentially “bricking” a device making it altogether unusable. Even with these consequences, temptation thrives and eventually overtakes.

Perhaps the greatest bit about these devices is that they are based on open source software. Getting to a Linux terminal shell (CLI) on either, is a relatively trivial task. Furthermore, due to the ease of stepping into such an accessible environment, the developer/enthusiast communities blossom.

Without having to write (or even look at) a line of code, both devices can be extended well beyond the consumer level they are marketed at. To tweak brings about such satisfaction, as deriving more function from form. The cost of which is a devotion of umpteen amounts of free time to push consumer hardware to its limits in exchange for paltry donations, “fame” and gratitude.

Even still, the software produced by these die-hards is dangerous. All the safeguards, QA, provided by these enterprise class companies with their tremendous R&D budgets, are effectively dissolved. When we step into rootshell, we leave the safe user level space established by the powers that be. But do we find glory or agony? Depending on the maturity of the community, generally the former.

And in my case? Most certainly the former. I had a few scares but all in all, both my NAS and phone are blazing far above stock. You’ve just got to be willing to put the time in and read read read. Don’t jump without reading everything there is to know about the “rooting” process. By the end, if you aren’t sure you fully understand what you are about to do, don’t.

The payoff, in screenshots from my phone:

ssh from my epic to the dns 323


Anecdotes / Computers — 1 comment
23
Dec 10

Thrifty technology buyer’s bane

8GB RAM in my trusty thinkpad X200 laptop has been a desire / occasional-need for quite some time. As a point of perspective, since the 8GB DDR3 “kit” (2 chips by 4GB each) cost well over $300. When I finally bit the bullet, patience on a potential deal expired, the kit had been hovering around $110 shipped for a few weeks.

Today, no more than seven days after purchase and a day after installing, a comparable kit can be procured for ~$66. Color me irritated.

On the upside, the brand I bought is the same price and arguably of superior quality to the slickdeal PNY brand.

Home / News — Leave a comment
02
Dec 10

Sad or fantastic? Congress targets TV ads

To keep advertisers at large from dominating the airwaves within the US homes of TV watchers, it has come to this:

“…the CALM (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) Act will give the FCC a mandate to regulate and enforce volume limits on commercials, ensuring that their maximum loudness does not exceed the average maximum loudness of the program they’re accompanying.”

This one has got to have been easy to pass. Whatever it takes to attempt to kick the lame-duck congress wrap.

Not to say I’m totally displeased, some of these advertisers are outright audibly obscene. Then again, most of us who own a TV made in the last (two?) decade(s) know a secret that makes this Act of Congress utterly moot.

Can you guess what it is? I just gave you a hint! If not, you probably don’t use it and I probably don’t watch TV at your house. Hey, maybe this little act will change that. Lucky you!?

Uncategorized — Leave a comment
10
Oct 10

10/10/10

feels as though it should be significant. what was life like 10/10/1010?

here’s to another great day being alive.

Anecdotes / Computers / Internet Technology — 1 comment
07
Oct 10

Unintentional Art via frozen Windows

Those clever engineers at Microsoft… what better way to deal with the frustration of having a locked up application than through art? I remember creating angry-art pieces back when frozen Windows applications, such as IE6 were common place. Good times.

Thanks to mr doob for re-creating the experience in a controlled environment.

News — Leave a comment
05
Sep 10

How to vote on California’s “global-warming law”

No on Proposition 23

“The ballot measure would suspend the global warming law until the state’s unemployment rate dropped below 5.5%, a level achieved only three times in the last three decades. Until now, the measure has been largely financed by two Texas-based companies, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp…”

“The fight over a November ballot initiative to suspend California’s global warming law has escalated sharply with the Koch brothers, oil billionaires and “tea party” backers… the [million-dollar] contribution to the campaign for Proposition 23 came Thursday from … the Kochs’ company … has estimated annual revenues of $100 billion … controls about 4,000 miles of oil pipelines.”

Undoubtedly, in effort to prevent progress to energy-independence and profit margins from slipping. Heaven forbid they innovate.

Yes on AB 32

“California’s global warming law, known as AB 32, is designed to cut the state’s emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the end of this decade. A significant chunk of the reductions would come through regulations aimed at fostering alternative fuels and generating electricity from solar, wind and other alternative energy sources.”

[source la times]

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