Make Firefox Faster at Forever Geek

(If you're on dial-up don't bother reading this)

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

link

The Best Way to Assist in Providing Emergency Relief in Southeast Asia

THE BEST WAY TO ASSIST IN PROVIDING EMERGENCY RELIEF
OF THE EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI VICTIMS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

The American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) announces its top-rated list of charities currently offering relief services to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated parts of Southeast Asia. The death toll, estimated near 70,000, continues to rise and over a million people throughout eight countries have been displaced due to the catastrophe. Many organizations are mobilizing to provide emergency assistance to meet the needs of those affected.
full story...

Bringing Down a Copycat Site

See what they did to defend themselves:


On December 24, I discovered a site that was frequently selling our software. Here is a summary of how we forced them to remove it.


Dec. 24, 2004: I received an e-mail from a former colleague in the shareware industry saying he had received an e-mail from a company selling our MailList King software and was surprised to hear we had sold it?

I replied that I was surprised as he was, given that we had certainly not sold it.

full story:

Feeling hungry? Pluck meal from the trash

Freegans say they protest capitalism

December 27, 2004

BY MONSY ALVARADO
BERGEN COUNTY RECORD

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Peaches, plums, oranges, cantaloupe, butternut squash, red peppers, jicama, a mess of cucumbers.

All fragrant, ripe, ready to eat.

And all plucked out of Dumpsters by a squad of young friends who feed on the edible treasures they find in the garbage of North Jersey's restaurants and markets.

They're known as freegans -- though Dumpster-divers might be more apt. They have the resources to buy their food, but they prefer harvesting it this way to make a political statement.
Full Story...

BBspot - Which File Extension Are You?

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2004/10/file_extensions/txt.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are .txt The one everybody knows and relies on, but avoids in social settings because you're very boring and non-descript.">
Which File Extension are You?

BBspot - Which OS Are You?

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/debian.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are Debian Linux. People have difficulty getting to know you. Once you finally open your shell they're apt to love you.">
Which OS are You?

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog

Go here and see if there is anything you can do to help:
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog for short News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.

Status on 12/28/2004 8:00 AM Centeral USA time:

Tsunami toll rises above 33,000

Source: CNN

Two days after a huge earthquake sent walls of water sweeping across the Indian Ocean from Thailand to Somalia killing at least 33,000 people, the international community is scrambling to help the region cope. The United Nations is asking donor countries to dig deep, saying this will likely be the costliest disaster ever.
link to full story

Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 Reaches Highest Score To Date On Hazard Scale

Well, isn't that a nice Christmas gift: Especially for people like me who are big believers of "Murphy's Law".

"Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 Reaches Highest Score To Date On Hazard Scale
Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas
NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office
December 23, 2004

A recently rediscovered 400-meter Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) is predicted to pass near the Earth on 13 April 2029. The flyby distance is uncertain and an Earth impact cannot yet be ruled out. The odds of impact, presently around 1 in 300, are unusual enough to merit special monitoring by astronomers, but should not be of public concern. These odds are likely to change on a day-to-day basis as new data are received. In all likelihood, the possibility of impact will eventually be eliminated as the asteroid continues to be tracked by astronomers around the world.

This object is the first to reach a level 2 (out of 10) on the Torino Scale. According to the Torino Scale, a rating of 2 indicates "a discovery, which may become routine with expanded searches, of an object making a somewhat close but not highly unusual pass near the Earth. While meriting attention by astronomers, there is no cause for public attention or public concern as an actual collision is very unlikely. New telescopic observations very likely will lead to re-assignment to Level 0 [no hazard]." This asteroid should be easily observable throughout the coming months.

The brightness of 2004 MN4 suggests that its diameter is roughly 400 meters (1300 feet) and our current, but very uncertain, best estimate of the flyby distance in 2029 is about twice the distance of the moon, or about 780,000 km (480,000 miles). On average, an asteroid of this size would be expected to pass within 2 lunar distances of Earth every 5 years or so.

Most of this object's orbit lies within the Earth's orbit, and it approaches the sun almost as close as the orbit of Venus. 2004 MN4's orbital period about the sun is 323 days, placing it within the Aten class of NEAs, which have an orbital period less than one year. It has a low inclination with respect to the Earth's orbit and the asteroid crosses near the Earth's orbit twice on each of its passages about the sun.

2004 MN4 was discovered on 19 June 2004 by Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of the NASA-funded University of Hawaii Asteroid Survey (UHAS), from Kitt Peak, Arizona, and observed over two nights. On 18 December, the object was rediscovered from Australia by Gordon Garradd of the Siding Spring Survey, another NASA-funded NEA survey. Further observations from around the globe over the next several days allowed the Minor Planet Center to confirm the connection to the June discovery, at which point the possibility of impact in 2029 was realized by the automatic SENTRY system of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. NEODyS, a similar automatic system at the University of Pisa and the University of Valladolid, Spain also detected the impact possibility and provided similar predictions.

December 24 Update:

2004 MN4 is now being tracked very carefully by many astronmers around the world, and we continue to update our risk analysis for this object. Today's impact monitoring results indicate that the impact probability for April 13, 2029 has risen to about 1.6%, which for an object of this size corresponds to a rating of 4 on the ten-point Torino Scale. Nevertheless, the odds against impact are still high, about 60 to 1, meaning that there is a better than 98% chance that new data in the coming days, weeks, and months will rule out any possibility of impact in 2029"
Source: NASA - Near Earth Object Program on 12/24/2004

On Permalinks and Paradigms...

For a good explaination about permalinks go here:
plasticbag.org | weblog | On Permalinks and Paradigms...

Christmas Reality

Just found this on Random Acts of Reality Blog.

Another Test...

You Are a Retrospective Soul

The most misunderstood of all the soul signs. Sometimes you even have difficulty seeing yourself as who you are. You are intense and desire perfection in every facet of your life. You're best described as extremely idealistic, hardworking, and a survivor. Great moments of insight and sensitivity come to you easily. But if you aren't careful, you'll ignore these moments and repeat past mistakes. For you, it is difficult to seperate the past from the present. You will suceed once you overcome the disappoinments in life. Souls you are most compatible with: Traveler Soul and Prophet Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

sarah. word.: Elf Rock

Found on Sarah Lane's web site:
Elf Rock

Hark! Behold the greatest Christmas carol making program ever! At first I thought it was stupid, that is until I loaded the Star Wars Elf Mix (now all co-workers within earshot of my laptop speakers want to kill me).

CNN.com - Transcript of Jon Stewart vs CrossFire

CNN CROSSFIRE
Jon Stewart's America: Aired October 15, 2004 - 16:30 ET

or watch the video

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart :: Stewart to Crossfire: Stop Hurting America

Must Read!!!

Free Feed Builder for Your Web Site (Tips)

The fine folks over at Ice Rocket have developed a new service in which you can build your own RSS feed and have it placed on your Web site. Now this is not the tool for those of you with an RSS feed already, but for those who’s updates, news, or anything else might be published via the “old way of doing things”.

Using the new service is as easy as it can get. First you need to do is register via their Web site. Then you can start your RSS building adventure! You give your new feed a channel name, channel link, channel description, channel image url, managing editor's E-mail address, Copyright, and the number of minutes before the channel should be refreshed.

Once it is created, then all you need to do is click on "Add Item". From there you put in the item name, item link, item description, author's E-mail and a link for comments, then hit "Save Item". Then you can go back to your main menu and publish! They will give you an RSS URL that you can direct your visitors to so that they can track your article or entries via a news aggregator.

Why would you need an RSS feed on your Web site? There are a plethora of diffrent reasons why RSS is the wave of the future. If you still aren't sure about this whole syndication thing, here are a few resources to help you learn more:

XML.com - What is RSS?
Web Reference - Introduction to RSS
Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips

So now you have no reason to at least try it out. Catch up with the rest of the Internet, and get into really simple syndication!

source: lockergnome's web developers

Steal This File Sharing Book -- A-Z HOWTO for file-sharing

One of the books I took on holidays with me was Wallace Wang's "Steal This File Sharing Book," just published by No Starch Press. It's a great, thorough, easy-to-read guide to all the different ways to acquire files over the Internet, from sharing by email and IRC to getting the most out of multiprotocol P2P tools to seeking out and using ratio-based leet warez boards.

This is unquestionably the best book on the subject that I've read. It strikes the perfect balance between factual -- "Here is what is available, here is the law, here is the means by which you can download, here is how to minimize your legal risk" -- and philosophical -- "Here is a breakdown of music industry sales, here is Harlan Ellison's opinion on bookwarez, here's what crackers have to say about zero-day warez trading, here's the dumbass laws that have been proposed to allow rights-holders to remotely shut down your computer via secret kill-switches, isn't that crazy?"

Wang is an accomplished tech writer and a stand-up comic, so Steal This File Sharing Book is both funny and lucid. It assumes almost no technical knowledge and it walks the reader through everything from file-compression protocols to anonymizing proxies to the notorious cross-stitch-pattern-trading underground.

If you want to figure out how to file-share safely, avoid spyware, not get busted, and learn about the morality and ethics as presented by all sides of the file-sharing debate, this is the book for you.

posted on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow at 06:35:54 AM

The Paper Napkin email rejection service

The Paper Napkin email rejection service
So here's the scenario: You're out at a bar, riding transit, or even just walking down the street, and some bozo who desperately wants into your pants starts up a conversation with you. Rather than make a scene or make them upset, you're polite and at least nod at the proper times. Then, of course, they ask you for your number. Except this is 2004, so maybe they ask for your email address instead.

That's where Paper Napkin comes in. Give them anyname@papernapkin.net (or paamail.com, to be less suspicious), tell them it's your address, and when they write you, they'll automatically get a response telling them how badly they've been rejected. If they sound desperate enough, it may even get posted and ridiculed. Yes, it's cruel, so use it wisely.

AndreaMosaic

AndreaMosaic is a free app that’ll assemble your photo mosaic in seconds. You just choose an image you want to create and choose the photos that will compose it. Check out the web site for instructions and download.

TinySpell

Take a minute and downloadTinySpell!

Occasionally you need to check the spelling of words in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that purpose. This is when tinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check the spelling of words in any Windows application.
tinySpell monitors your typing on the fly and alerts you whenever it detects a misspelled word. It also checks the spelling of every word you copy to the clipboard. To correct a misspelled word click the tinySpell icon or press the hot-key to pop up a list of suggested replacement words from which you can select a correction.
tinySpell installs itself in the system tray for easy access.
It comes with an American-English dictionary containing more than
110,000 words.

TinySpell was developed by KEDMI Scientific Computing who is also
the developer of Numerit – an intuitive programming environment
for developing numerical computation programs and producing
publication-quality technical documents. You can visit Numerit’s
web-site by right-clicking the tinySpell icon in the system tray
and selecting the item www.numerit.com. This is also the web-site
for downloading tinySpell and its updates.

G4TechTV screws up for the last time : posted by Becky Worly on "The Mortuary Portal"

Found on: GEEK OUT
G4TechTV screws up for the last time

Yup. Gone are several shows and even more presenters from the old TechTV. UnScrewed was cancelled (no big loss there), but then they can half the staff of The Screen Savers.

When people started complaining in the forums, G4 dropped in like Big Brother and came off like an ass, banning folks for speaking their minds about it.

Both Kevin and Sarah stayed on, but decided to take a back seat to hosting the show, which is now hosted by asshat numbskull Kevin Pereira and the walking dead Chi-Lan Lieu. Pereira showed his tech ineptitude by repeatedly defaulting back to Kevin Rose when the tech questions got a bit above his mentality, which isn't much.

Leo Laporte commented that he thought G4 bought TechTV to attract new viewers to their idiotic gaming channel (aimed squarely at pre-teens who think watching game demos is cool), but this has backfired, and I finally got sick of it all and have now blocked the channel via my TiVo.

No more crap, and forget the quality shows that were once on TechTV... They are gone forever.

For those former TechTV personalities stuck treading water at G4, I hope you get out while the getting's good. And I wish you the best of luck in the future.

-Kev

As for the layoffs, lots of the people let go are a great, but I have to say the biggest mistake in my mind was letting Yoshi go. He brought something so authentic and innovative to the show in the form of his mods. I hope he does continue them in another form somewhere else.

As for the rest of the folks let go, I am actually excited for them. They had their moving expenses partially paid for, and now they are looking for TV work in LA, not San Francisco. Employment options in production are much better in SoCal, and trust me, no one’s happy to be at G4 right now. Morale is crap. Chalk that up to CEO Charles Hirschorn. I’ve met with Chuck, the guy has the leadership abilities of a clam, and about the same personality.

Onwards and upwards!
Becky Worley (Former TechTV Host)

Source: The Mortuary Portal

The Death of TechTV

The Death of TechTV. - TheMacMind - inside teenage macheads

The Death of TechTV.

Nov 29, 2004 - 09:15 PM - Editorial - dark_lotus

Editorial
DISCLAIMER: The following is a personal account of what happened during the final months of working at TechTV. Any opinions expressed are my own, and everything stated is true to the best of my knowledge.

As some of you may be aware, I was an intern for TechTV for the last 5 months of its San Francisco Operations. However long before that I was friends with Kevin Rose, and Dan Huard during the creation of the online show thebroken.

Here is the true story of the end of TechTV. Many employees were/are not able to discuss this due to their contracts and termination agreements, which is why you haven't heard a lot.

X-Play was the highest rating show on TechTV, and we were setting new records for the company every month. Call for Help, along with all the other shows were doing splendidly. It was a great time for TechTV. Comcast had just announced that it had bought TechTV from Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen. There were vicious rumors spreading around, but everyone was confident that TechTV would continue, the way it had been. At various X-Play meetings, we were told that it was financially more viable to maintain operations in San Francisco, rather than move operations to Los Angeles. Considering the production pipeline, TechTV was very efficient at what it did. It's shows also had personality, people you could relate too. Unlike G4's shallow programming, there was a personal side to TechTV, which I speculate is why fans of TechTV are so loyal.

One Friday morning when I got to work, to my horror, the offices were empty. Adam Sessler was the only one at the X-Play area, and needless to say he was not happy. He directed me down to the Conference room, where I saw most of the TechTV staff crammed into what was a large room. Comcast had just announced that they were firing all the staff at TechTV. They also announced that people had until May 14th to re-apply for jobs in LA. As was pointed out by one member of the audience, this was the week of the largest gaming conference in the US, E3. That's right, G4 were blissfully unaware that the deadline they had set was right in the middle of E3. At this point I wanted to go and punch the new CEO (G4's CEO). Fortunately for him, I left. I heard later that G4 had extended the deadline to the following week. As Becky Worley said "Chalk that up to CEO Charles Hirschorn. I’ve met with Chuck, the guy has the leadership abilities of a clam, and about the same personality."

My first thought was that Comcast were never interested in the content of our shows, rather they where after the 45 million households where TechTV was being shown. That works out roughly to be $5 per household. Over the following weeks, it seemed that a great cloud had set over TechTV, the jovial, exciting place I had come to know and love was slowly being swallowed by the horror that everyones days were numbered. A couple of weeks later, the last episode of Call for Help aired. The next day that I came into work, it scared me. The lack of Call for Help staff generated a deafening silence throughout the office.

During June, the crew from X-Play began signing their contracts to move to LA, along with The ScreenSavers crew, Unscrewed and the other shows moving down to LA. One particular person, whom had acted as a mentor for me during my internship, sat at the round table, staring blankly at the contract. It was 3:00pm when he signed it, he said to me "I can't believe I'm doing this". Those who didn't sign a contract had to sign an agreement in order to get their Severance package (a significant sum of money). The severance package stipulated that the person could not say ANYTHING negative about G4, even if it was true, and it was also stipulated that the person could not discuss the severance package agreement with anyone. I must also add that no single person at TechTV told me this, and that my knowledge came from reading the document itself. It sounded like G4 knew exactly what it was doing from day one.

I will remember Thursday July 15th 2004 as one of the saddest days of my life. It was the filming day of the last episode of X-Play in San Francisco. Afterwards, the crew went to a bar, however they were carding, so me along with 2 of the other interns were not allowed in. Adam came out and said "It's been f***ing awesome working with you guys". We shook hands and left to In and Out Burger at Fishermans Wharf. After being dropped off I went home. The next day was the last day of TechTV operations, and I went in to see the final episode of The Screensavers, and went to the after party. I said goodbye to everyone I knew there.

Kevin and I had discussed doing another episode of thebroken after everyone moved and got settled in. The coming months passed insanely quickly. I went to the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, and had attempted to take some time to go and see Kevin, however my schedule was incredibly packed and i didn't get to see anyone. I ran into one of the old interns down there, and after I got back called Adam to say hello. Summer quarter finals drew in, and at the end of September I moved from Daly City into San Francisco. Sadly enough, I could see the old offices where I used to work from my balcony. October came and went as I settled into my new place and got everything underway.

I saw one of the other old interns at the premier of The Incredibles, and we reminisced a bit. Then on the following Thursday night, I received a call from Kevin. I missed the call and called him back, he had left a message saying he wanted to catch up as it had been a while since we last spoke. I had read just prior to the phonecall that the staff from The ScreenSavers (except Kevin and Sarah) had been fired, and that Unscrewed had been cancelled, and all their staff fired. I spoke to Kevin, and it was all sadly true. On top of that, Fresh Gear had been shelved.

Comcast and G4 have officially killed the techTV we all knew and loved, they're even changing the name back to G4 in January. That's six years of hard work down the toilet. So, where will people go for technically orientated programming? Leo Laporte stipulates that the Internet will be the new broadcast medium, allowing for even more focused programming.

"As for the rest of the folks let go, I am actually excited for them. They had their moving expenses partially paid for, and now they are looking for TV work in LA, not San Francisco. Employment options in production are much better in SoCal, and trust me, no one’s happy to be at G4 right now." - Becky Worley.

Tonight G4 aired the new version of TSS. And the fan's aren't happy.

If you're interested in reading more personal accounts of what's happened:
Alex Albrecht
Sarah Lane
Joey the Intern

Robert Padbury
rpadbury@themacmind.com