Hilarious old commercial from Saturday Night Live.
WARNING: Persons denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.
Get the video in Quicktime format at The Robot MarketPlace.
-
Subscribe
Robot Insurance
04-Feb-07Andy Griffith on Eavesdropping
31-Jan-07Someone at the Electronic Privacy Information Center figured out that this clip aired on October 30, 1967.
Via EFFector 20.05
When the Windows Installation Fails
18-Jan-07When the installation of an operating system doesn’t go smoothly, it can quickly turn into a major nightmare. In some occasions there seems as if there simply is no solution, but there is! Standby for the answer…but first – my story:
I have an old Compaq Presario laptop that has always been a lemon. This thing would always would hang or do other strange things. At one point the thermal pad on the processor fried. The symptom for this is the machine just powering down hard at random. (Like you yanked the power cord) What happens is the BIOS shuts down the power because the processor became to hot. After replacing the thermal pad and later the hard drive, I determined it was finally time to reinstall the OS.
When attempting to install Windows, the laptop would simply go nowhere. I tried multiple times with valid media and it simply would not load. After giving up on Windows, my answer was to install Ubuntu GNU/Linux instead. The Ubuntu Linux distribution installed flawlessly, and I even used it to connect to a wireless network for a while.
If you are thinking of trying a Linux distribution, just go for it. Use an old PC that you have sitting around just to get something going. Linux runs great on older hardware that would not work with Windows. And the best part is that it is free and comes with a great support community!
For a similar story, check out Harold Jarche’s article titled Linux; best for your average home user.
Export From RoboForm to KeePass
16-Jan-07Update 29Nov2009: Thanks to @jimjon for pointing out that new versions of KeePass support importing of passcards from RoboForm. This eliminates the need to go through the tedious steps below. KeePass continues to improve. Show some support!
RoboForm is a fantastic program, but the fact that it doesn’t run on Linux is a major problem for me. KeePass seems like the best alternative, but it does not currently support a direct import from RoboForm. I have almost 140 passwords, many of which consist of 10-30 random characters. Typing these in manually would be a major headache, so here’s the best hack that I found.
- Download the trial version of PassCrypt
- Import your RoboForm data to PassCrypt
- Export your newly imported data from PassCrypt to a CSV file. You don’t need the headings.
- Download a CSV file editor – I recommend CSVed
- Once you’ve installed CSVed – go to Tools, Options, Double Quotes. Click the box next to “Save CSV File With Double Quotes”. If you don’t select this, your import will fail. KeePass requires that the data is between double quotes. If you try to use Excel it will strip the quotes from the file and the import will fail. Believe me on this one – I’m saving you a lot of time and trouble.
- Open the CSV file you exported from PassCrypt in CSVed to modify the file.
- Put your columns in the following order: “Account”,”Login Name”,”Password”,”Web Site”,”Comments”. You don’t need these column headings in your CSV file – you just need the columns in this order.
- If you have any ampersands (&) in you passwords – do a find and replace in CSVed to replace all instances of & with &. It appears as if PassCrypt did this during the export to CSV.
- Update 8/6/2007: At some point the WordPress WYSIWYG mangled my post in regards to HTML special characters. The bullet point above may have problems with the display of ampersands. The idea is that during the process of moving passwords from one program to another, the ampersands in your passwords may be replaced by the html character code. This will obviously cause your passwords to not work. Thanks to skibum mark for the heads-up.
- You may notice that many of your usernames or passwords are missing from the exported file. This is because RoboForm captures these values from websites that use different terms to identify them. One may be “username” while one may be “logonid”. You’ll have to manually enter these missing values in CSVed or wait until the file is imported into KeePass.
I told you it was a hack. Someone needs to write a plugin to import passwords directly from RoboForm into KeePass. Until then – use the steps above. If there is enough interest I’ll put together a better tutorial with screenshots.
Kudos to Alana Post for the article RoboForm to KeePass – which outlines the basic steps.
Americans Aren’t Getting Taller
14-Jan-07Americans have historically grown taller as time progresses. However, this growth has been stagnant for the past 50 years. A recent article in The New Yorker titled “The Height Gap” discusses why Europeans are getting taller and Americans are not.
My interpretation of the article leads me to believe that nutrition and overall health are the biggest factors that determine a person’s height. I’m not an expert on this, and I realize that genetics also play a part – but you can make some common-sense observations after reading the article mentioned above.
Not only has the American diet of processed food crippled the country with obesity and related health problems, but healthier countries such as the Netherlands have passed us in average height.
It is a good idea to upgrade the firmware on your router to take advantage of new features and bug fixes. Firmware is the software that runs the router. Most people are not aware that the firmware can be upgraded and don’t know why they should do so. It is likely that the vast majority of people never upgrade their firmware.
Why should I upgrade my firmware?
- Bug fixes – software is notoriously buggy. Something as important as a router demands the most up-to-date, clean software. Think about the data that flows through your wireless network…email, credit card numbers, etc.
- Security – firmware upgrades may give you access to new security features such as WPA, MAC address filtering, etc…
- Performance – can your router be too fast? Performance increases are a possibility when upgrading the firmware.
The process to upgrade firmware may vary among the different manufacturers. In the case of Dlink, they offer the firmware as a download from the product support page. Once you’ve downloaded the update, you log into the router itself to install it.
If you need more incentive to upgrade your router and implement better security, read the article by David Pogue of the NY Times – How Secure is Your Wi-Fi Connection. His article is geared more toward Wi-Fi hotspots, but your wireless router at home works the same way.
Update – 1/11/2006: GetNetWise has videos on how to setup the various security features of wireless routers. Check out their page Activate your Base Station Wireless Security Settings.
Unabomber’s Secret Code Cracked
02-Jan-07Ted Kaczynski’s secret code has finally been cracked – a decade after he was arrested. The most memorable quote in the article comes from Bruce Schneier:
“it would not surprise me if this was the most complex cipher the FBI has seen since World War II.”
The irony is that Kaczynski was against technology and targeted computer experts. These same computer experts would likely be very impressed by Kaczynski’s cipher. Ciphers are critical to secure storage and transmission of electronic data, and the fact that the NSA couldn’t break Kaczynski’s cipher is quite impressive.
Top 10 27BStroke6 Posts of 2006
01-Jan-0727BStroke6 is a blog by Wired that covers privacy issues. Their top 10 list of 2006 is worth reading. Ted Stevens, NSA Surveillance, and fake boarding-pass generators are all on the list.
Another Scathing Review of the Zune
31-Dec-06The Zune is Microsoft’s new MP3 player, and it seems to be a horrible product. I referenced a humorous review of the Zune in a previous post titled “Don’t Buy a Zune“. Here’s another review of the Zune: Whatever Happened to the Zune?
Via Reddit
Some may think that I’m being hard on the Zune or Microsoft in general. What’s funny about Microsoft is that they continually try to compete with well established products or services and often fail. A popular, well-established service or product got that way by offering exactly what people want. What Microsoft tries to do is offer an alternative that doesn’t offer any real advantages over whatever they are trying to compete with. Just look at the Zune, Live Search, etc., to see what I’m referring to. The well established alternatives are the iPod and Google Maps, of course.
