Isaac.Eiland-Hall.com

As I had this problem for some time with no solution, I thought I’d make this post to get more search results out there… Hope this helps:

Option 1: Use a different skin

Simple enough, if you don’t mind it… Which is what I did for a few releases of Winamp…

Option 2: Scale the skin

Right-click the taskbar button, go to Winamp -> Window Settings -> Scaling and choose Custom. On my system, as soon as I changed the scale, it popped the window onscreen. The tip I read said to scale it small, then you should have the top part of the window to drag… Either way, hopefully that’ll work for you.

Lawsuit over web site accessibility for the blind becomes class action
A lawsuit brought in 2006 by a blind student at the University of California-Berkeley has now morphed into a class action case against US retailer Target. A federal judge has just certified a nationwide class in the case, which alleges that Target’s web site is not fully accessible to the blind. It’s a case that could help establish the ways in which the Americans With Disabilities Act applies to the Internet, and it has already generated a ruling that, in California at least, commercial web sites must be accessible.

This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

A few months ago, I installed the ‘noscript’ extension for Firefox – it essentially blocks scripts from running on domains unless I give explicit permission. I have been very disappointed to see how many sites do not operate correctly with scripts disabled. I believe this issue is very related to the issue of disabled website visitors.

I think it would be no bad thing to require certain standards be followed, and would eliminate some really poor website design choices (i.e. all-flash sites, at least most of the time).

The AudioFile: Understanding MP3 compression: Page 1
But what is MP3? The usual explanations usually take one of two forms. The long version, available in technical papers, is written in jargon and filled with math. The short version, often used by newspapers and nontechnical periodicals, simply states that the process eliminates parts of sound not normally heard by the human ear. But this one-sentence description raises more questions than it answers for any reasonably tech-savvy reader: how does it find those unheard sounds, and how does it get rid of them? Whats the difference between the different bit rates and quality levels? If youre anything like me, youve often wanted to know the mechanics of MP3, but not to the point of writing your own encoder.

This is a very well-written article, intended to try and bring more understanding of exactly how the MP3 format works to non-engineer—types, and I think it succeeds pretty well. It’s still a little heavier than some might wish; but if you stick with it, I think you’ll have a better understanding of the general process of making an MP3. I think it helps to have a basic understanding of what an audio waveform basically means (in regards to how it relates to the makeup of frequencies), but I’d imagine even folks who don’t have that understanding can still glean some [hopefully] interesting information.

From hackademix.net:
hackademix.net » Pure Java™, Pure Evil™ Popups
Imagine you’re a web advertiser.
Imagine you can open a popup window from a web page defeating any popup blocker.
Imagine this popup can invade the whole desktop, full screen.
Imagine this popup has no title bar, no menus, no toolbar, no location bar, no border and no buttons. No mean to close it.
Imagine user can’t move or minimize this popup. It will go away only when the browser is killed or your show is done…

Now imagine you’re a phisher.
Imagine you can use this almighty popup to draw anything you want. A fake browser or — why not? — a whole fake desktop to collect user’s data.

Impossible wet dreams of clueless evildoers?
No, it’s just 100% Pure Java™ Reality.

---

I haven’t heard of any active exploits, but it’s only a matter of time. But if not this, then the next that’s found… Javascript is a constant problem.It may sound like it’s just a Firefox problem, but it’s not. You’ll notice that the applet ‘solution’ covers any browser.

In fact, I highly recommend using Firefox, with the NoScript extension running. The NoScript extension is so easy to use – when you load a webpage, you’ll have an icon in the status bar. You can click, and it’ll show a list of domains, from which the current page wants to load scripts. You can temporarily or permanently whitelist domains you trust with a click – or de-whitelist them (unlike other solutions that make it easy to mark something, but hard to un-mark it).

I browse this way daily – and it didn’t take me long to have all my regular sites whitelisted – first time I visited them, it was easy. Tip: You’ll notice a lot of sites load scripts from several sources. You’ll notice that, say, a video site might not play the video until you figure out which of those external scripts power the video. So temporarily whitelist the ones that look plausible until the video works; then de-whitelist it (because it was a temporary whitelist) and re-whitelist it (permanently).

Official Google Blog: Personality goes a long way

Quote: We wanted to offer you a way to add some personality to your Google homepage, too, but we had to ask ourselves some tough questions. How do we add personality without taking away from the information? How do we make sure people don’t get sick of looking at the same theme every day?

Today we’re releasing six themes for the personalized homepage that try to solve these challenges: a city, a teahouse (super cute—this one is my favorite), a winter scene, a sky, a beach and a bus stop. All of our themes are dynamic: they change with your own local time of day, current weather conditions or season. If you add the beach theme, for example (changes with time of day), it will ask you for your Zip code and adjust itself to match your local sunrise and sunset times. So if you happen to be stuck in a windowless office, you can at least crack open a cold one and watch the sun set over your desktop.

Themes for your custom Google page?

Awesome!

Link to Article: nurl.us/tq

Quote: Born from a military vehicle and the most prominent symbol of America’s global military dominance, the HUMMER does not require more testosterone, but hey, boys will be boys.

I’d love to find out which county this is… The trees make it look like North Central Texas, and if I’d have to guess, I’d guess somewhere within a county or two of the I-35 corridor between Dallas and Austin…

I really wonder about the local reaction to this sherriff sending off a Hummer to Germany to be customized… And really, couldn’t a better paint scheme been found? But I suppose sherriffs aren’t generally known for their artist skills, and… it does get the job done, I suppose.

I wouldn’t mind owning this, don’t get me wrong – but I think my take would have been a little different….

Link to Article: Strawjet Project

Quote: The desire to use straw as a building material is as old as the agricultural revolution, but straw based products have always suffered from the apparent lack of strength of the plant itself. Previous technologies from straw bale construction to the recent development of compressed straw-board and straw panels have all begun with crushed, chopped straw. The fundamental advance embodied in the Strawjet technology is the use of the whole undamaged plant stem. The compressive strength of straw when loaded parallel with the stem is impressive. The Strawjet system seeks to use that strength by bundling the plant stems into “cables” about 2 inches in diameter.

So as they harvest the fields, they’re creating these continuous cables, which are cut into 8’ lengths.
(although I would assume this could be changed—I can imagine spooling up the cables and transporting them elsewhere for projects that require different lengths)

So far, they are then typically covered in papercrete (concrete made from cement and paper instead of cement and rock, basically, for a lighter substance that can be sprayed onto forms – something my uncle does).

Basically, you end up with a building substance that is very strong and environmentally friendly. Here’s a picture of a wall-segment for testing:

This is potentially revolutionary. It has been pointed out that, if nothing else, it gives farmers a cheap building material for their own use. It can also provide income for something otherwise viewed as waste.

My only question is in regards to how important plowing the straw back under is for sustaining the land. But I trust someone will be thinking about this… Assuming that’s not a major concern, this could well be very revolutionary.

I don’t know the amount of material that could be made, but surely it could replace a non-trivial percentage of the building materials used. Seems like if it caused less reliance on wood, that couldn’t be a bad thing—assuming that would allow for more mature forests, although a cynical point of view might be that fewer forests of any type (natural vs. renewed) would be the result… Still, that’s merely a cynical point of view, and surely this would be a valuable tool to help the environment.

And surely this would help not just the United States, but other countries as well…

I’m no expert, but I don’t see much of a downside, even trying to be pessimistic.

NOTE: I do NOT recommend anyone download and run this, except maybe geeks on a box you use solely for testing. Unlike beta software, which is usually relatively stable, alpha software is usually very unstable.

Link to Article: mozilla links

Quote: As planned Firefox Alpha 3 (code name Bon Echo) has been released to achieve the goal of having a feature complete build at the alpha level.

I can’t wait for the release! Although I suppose…. I will have to wait.

Firefox rocks.

Link to Article: fadtastic – a multi-author web design trends journal » Blog Archive » The end of an era for Times New Roman?

Quote: Earlier this year, Microsoft released betas of Office 2007, and the first thing reviewers noticed, besides the new interface, was that Times New Roman had been deposed as the default font with something called . . . Calibri?

I’m just surprised they didn’t go with Verdana… Of course, my opinion might change once I get my hands on Calibri – I haven’t seen it yet.

Link to Article: Treehugger: Holographic Solar: New Method of Concentrating Sunlight Could Be Cheaper

Quote: Prism Solar Technologies in New York has developed a proof-of-concept solar module that uses holograms to concentrate light, possibly cutting the cost of solar modules by as much as 75 percent, making them competitive with electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Now that seems like a worthy goal…

Although I don’t have an engineering or scientific level understanding of the various ways to generate energy, technologies like solar cells, wind and hydro power seem to be surely among the best, from an environmental point of view.

So it seems like generally speaking, any technology that enhances the practicality of these technologies is a Good Thing™.

Link to Article: IfEnergy: Loremo on the Edge

Quote: The one, two combination of light weight and tunnel tested aerodynamics allow this car to travel 157 miles per gallon of gasoline or 1.5 l per 100km!

And it looks pretty spiffy, too!

And here’s a link to the Loremo site...

Link to Article: gizmag Article: New high performance, zero emission commercial vehicle

Quote: The soon-to-debut UK-built Modec van is the first zero emission van that is comparable in economy and performance to diesel equivalents, making it a real and viable urban delivery vehicle.

It has a range of up to 120 miles, and can recharge overnight. Since it can carry two tons, it’s certainly viable for many business situations…

One especially cool fact is that it actually goes farther in start/stop situations, unlike gas- and diesel-based solutions…

Pretty cool. I hope we see this adopted here in the US…

Link to Article: Digital Mars – The D Programming Language

Quote: D was conceived in December 1999 by Walter Bright as a reengineering of C and C , and has grown and evolved with helpful suggestions and critiques by friends and colleagues.

I have no idea of the usefulness of the language, or if it is truly worthy of taking on the name, but I thought it was cool anyway.

C shares that story for being named—it was created as an enhanced alternative to B, as you can read about here.

So I have hope that D will take off successfully, since that would be neat. And maybe in another few years, we can have E to follow up…

New Tech Spy: Boeing 797 to take on Airbus with (1000 seat) giant Blended Wing plane

 

Quote: Boeing is preparing a 1000 passenger jet that could reshape the Air travel industry for the next 100 years. The radical Blended Wing design has been developed by Boeing in cooperation with the NASA Langley Research Center. The mammoth plane will have a wing span of 265 feet compared to the 747’s 211 feet, and is designed to fit within the newly created terminals used for the 555 seat Airbus A380, which is 262 feet wide.

Well, I wonder if it’s not a little late—seems like there might be a smaller market for super-large aircraft like this… Although I wonder how it would work for cargo…

OTOH, about time to see a major revolution in aircraft design – even if this particular design is way overdue anyway – I know there were similar basic designs back in the 1950’s, if not earlier. Still, I’m rather sure that the design has been modernized in every way anyway, so it’s not like I’m saying they’re using outdated design!

GRYNX » TicTac flashlight

Quote: A disposable torch with long life (I hope I don’t invent the wheel once more) I bought ‘tic-tac’ mint candy and found out that this package must be ideal for 3 AAA batteries to make a small torch (or lamp) with.

Pretty cool!

Maybe not as cool as an Altoid flashlight would be, but I like Altoids better. And, I suppose, Altoids devices are overdone anway…

Sightwave’s Digiviewer digital binoculars – Engadget

Quote: With a 22x optical and 10x digital zoom, the Digiviewer produced a pretty good picture up until the optical-to-digital handover, thanks to the built-in autofocus. Only a few prototypes exist now, but that’s what CES is all about—impressing buyers and getting some distribution love for your product.

Digital binoculars?

That’s an idea I hadn’t thought of, even though I suppose it’s an obvious step…

Sounds like a good idea—but then I think: Why not seperate the display from the camera? And furthermore, this would make a good platform for taking pictures—put the camera on a tripod, and have a controlling device on a wire (or…. wireless?)...

Hmm…

Interesting.

Maybe in a couple of decades we’ll see some REALLY cool products…

Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span? – Yahoo! News

Quote: “Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD,” Gerecke says.

I learned about the short lifespan a couple of years ago, and I’ve been trying to spread the word. So this article, which is rather boring, serves as a good reminder—CDRs do not last.

What’s the best way to keep your documents and other data longterm?

My recommendations:

1. Get a second hard drive: They’re getting cheaper now, and usually there’s plenty of room to store copies of software you download, as well as digital music—and the documents you want to keep. Having a second copy (one on each hard drive) means you have an easily accessible backup in case one hard drive crashes. (Of course, if the computer is stolen, burns, or otherwise becomes wholly inaccessible, both copies are lost)

2. Annual checkups: Go ahead and burn those CDRs, but check them annually, and burn new copies of the most important things. At least check every two years… But burn multiple copies of important documents, in particular. As technologies progress, DVDs hold several CDRs – so what once took several CDRs might take only one or two DVDs. Of course, you’ll accumulate more and larger data over time, but the storage media will grow as well….

3. Online storage: Google gives a large amount of space—emailing important documents to your Gmail address is a good option. However, as a free service that might disappear at any time, it shouldn’t be your sole option—but none of these are intended as total solutions. In addition to free services like Google, I’m developing a (paid) internet storage solution. (The project I’m working on will allow you to map an ‘internetwork drive’ – a drive you can access via Windows like any other drive on your computer, but that will be pysically located on my server, thus giving you storage outside your home that you can easily access from your home—or anywhere).

I don’t recommend a single one of these options—the more important the data is, the more options you should use. Something very important, like digital (or scanned) photos of a life-changing event (e.g. wedding, etc) that simply cannot be replaced should get the most attention. I would consider having one set on your primary hard drive, one set on your secondary hard drive, a couple of burned (CDR) copies, as well as a copy stored offsite somewhere.

But for things that are important, but less important—you might choose only one or two backup methods… I’ve taken a number of digital pictures that are important to me, but that wouldn’t completely depress me for months if I lost them. So I might store them on both hard drives and on my server, and decide that’s enough…

Point is – match the effort to the importance; and take the time to make whatever backups you think are needed. Your hard drive will crash some day; your CDRs will become unreadable—times are changing, and you need to consider how to make the data you want to keep available for the future.

The good news is that it’s not really hard.

(Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in the internetwork drive I mentioned – setup is easy, and I’m still in beta testing mode; if the service does go fullblown live, my beta testers will get cheap or free services in thanks for testing…)

FlexDeals

Quote: No MIR Required. Staples 50/Pack 4.7GB DVD-R, Spindle = $13 – $5 coupon code 88176 = $8.
@Staples or Staples 50/Pack 4.7GB DVD R for the same price with code: 91574.

The two links from the post are:

This one and this one...

(not personally verified)

Behind the Curtain at TCG: NASA ditches IE in favor of Firefox

Quote: A little birdie told me today that NASA has given up entirely on Internet Explorer. Now every time you go to a page using IE, you get up to three prompts telling you how risky it is to run scripts. The official line is that the newest IE vulnerability was the proverbial straw, and now NASA’s standard browser is Firefox.

Sweet.

News

Quote: You can literally carry the material in your pocket without any kind of safety precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the surrounding air, and the DTU-tablet therefore contains large amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a “shot” of ammonia and it is ready for use again.

If this is true, then it may truly be revolutionary.

I hope at least SOME of these types of things are true…........... :-S

USB Powered Air Darts. – The Red Ferret Journal

Quote: Powered by your mac or pc, you’ll have hours of flying fun with these USB air darts. Let the mission begin! * Control the aim and the firing mechanism of the darts via your computer mouse * Cylindrical base * 3 darts * USB powered * Software included

ZOMGWTFBBQ!

I so want these!

CNN to start live Net video service | ajc.com

Quote: One goal is to get people to use CNN Pipeline on their computers while at work, especially if they don’t have a TV nearby. Pipeline also is meant to have a much different feel than CNN or CNN Headline News. Among other things, CNN Pipeline will feature raw video — of the latest car chase, weather disaster or congressional hearing — with relatively little commentary from anchors.

Very interesting indeed.

If it works as well as it sounds, I hope it’s a success!

Gone Spear-Phishin’ – New York Times

Quote: In May, Israeli investigators opened their bag of goodies, disclosing that the Trojan horse on Mr. Jackont’s computer had also galloped onto the networks of about 60 other Israeli companies, unleashing the biggest corporate espionage scandal in Israeli history. Prosecutors indicted members of three of the country’s largest private investigation firms on criminal fraud charges in July. And some of Israel’s most prestigious corporations are now under investigation for possibly stealing information from companies in such assorted fields as military contracting, telephony, cable television, finance, automobile and cigarette importing, journalism and high technology.

Very interesting read. Something to keep an eye out for if your business has competitors…

(And what business doesn’t? Well, besides monopolies, I suppose… )

BBspot – Geek Parents Using Cooling Technology Instead of Medicine to Lower Fevers

Quote: “I was working on my rig in the basement installing a new water-cooling system when my daughter came down with a 103 degree fever,” said Fernando Ferringer of coolingyourkids.com. “I knew we didn’t have any Tylenol, and that’s when I had a ‘Eureka’ moment.”

Awesome…

The site may have gotten too many hits, as I can’t load it… Just in case it comes back later, here’s a link (I haven’t seen it yet personally).....

You have to check out the article for the picture, if nothing else, though…

Niice.

(The “cool” tag really applies!)

Mozilla Update :: Extensions—More Info:IE Tab – All Releases

Quote: This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.

I haven’t even tested this and I’m already posting about it.

Tres chic, and damned useful.