Twitter Logon Problem – Continuous Over Capacity

Posted on January 11, 2012 by admin

For several days I had a problem logging into my Twitter account. I wondered at first whether I had been banned for some reason, but I couldn’t think of any reason for that. Then I checked that I could see my profile when not logged in, so all was well there.

Unfortunately, as soon as I logged in, I I went straight back to the fail whale.

To make a long story short, this behavior continued until I logged in using Tweetdeck. After that, I could log in with my browser again. I have no idea why this should be, and no way to duplicate the problem, but just in case it might work for someone else, I thought I’d document it.

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Switching to Linux

Posted on January 6, 2012 by admin

Azərbaycan: Ubuntu-nun rəsmi loqosu. Deutsch: ...

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This guess post at Greg Laden’s blog gives one man’s experience switching to Linux. It’s a repost from 2009, so the version numbers are a bit different (Ubuntu is at 11.10 now), but it still gives a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I would add the strong recommendation that when you switch operating systems you look at what you use carefully and check on the web for compatible options to use under the new system.

There is a learning curve for Ubuntu, but it can be especially valuable for people who need to have reasonable power at a low price. I use an Ubuntu machine as my main office work machine. I do some work on this Windows laptop as well, but almost everything I do is best done on the Linux box.

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The Crash of Air France Flight 447 and You

Posted on December 10, 2011 by admin

Popular Mechanics has a tremendously interesting article based on a recent book that provided transcripts of the black box recordings of this flight as it went down over the Atlantic Ocean.

For someone who is not a pilot, but has read something about it, it seems hard to believe that a professional pilot of any level of experience would keep pulling back on the stick through a number of minutes of a stall alarm. Nifty flight simulator programs teach you that much. In the comfort of your own home. With nothing but virtual skill on the line.

Well, maybe not so much. I think this is an excellent illustration of how hard it is for us to change course when things are going wrong. We stick with familiar habits and look for obvious solutions. The greater the pressure, the more likely (as the article notes) we are to cling to the familiar.

Perhaps there’s a lesson for all us non-pilots in this. Besides not saying something you haven’t had to do yourself is simple, perhaps we all have habits of mind that we might need to work on if we’re going to be up to responding to a fast moving world.

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The Ada Initiative – Women in Open Source

Posted on December 10, 2011 by admin

Linux.com reports on the progress in just under a year of The Ada Initiative, which has this mission:

“A world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open technology, open data, and open culture. We want women writing free software, women editing Wikipedia, women creating the Internet and women shaping the future of global society.”

This was the first I had heard of this initiative. It looks like a commendable set of goals.

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Passwords

Posted on November 22, 2011 by admin

SmartPlanet has a list of the 25 worst passwords of 2011. It’s good to read the comments as well.

Computer people tend to make the error of thinking that any password that’s hard to guess is good, and the harder the better. But the fact is that people tend to write down passwords that are hard to remember. I’ve often gotten the “how did you guess?” look of awe from a client when I log directly into their machine. They think I pulled some sort of magic, when I’m actually reading their password off a note they left near the monitor.

If you can come up with a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers, involving both upper and lower case that you can remember well, then it’s good. But you might have to back off a bit so you can remember it rather than making it available near your workstation.

 

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RIP Dennis Ritchie

Posted on October 13, 2011 by admin

Dennis Ritchie, the ‘R’ in K&R so familiar to any C programmer, has passed away.

I learned C fairly early, though I passed on to C++ as well. I haven’t done any work in C for some time, but my copy of K&R is well-worn.

(HT: Greg Laden)

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Amazon Eating the World?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by admin

Amazon.com-Logo

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There’s an interesting article in Bloomsberg BusinessWeek titled Amazon, the Company that Ate the World. The title may seem just a bit over the top, but the content is interesting. I enjoyed the commentary on Amazon.com‘s business strategy.

I admit to some concern as companies like Apple and now even Google try to lock up the markets. Amazon has been guilty of this as well, but I think the best defense is the fact that multiple companies, all major players, are trying for this goal.

Face it! We pretty much all want the services that can only be provided by these larger companies. We can’t expect them not to want to dominate their markets. Each of them have done so by providing something that people want, and doing it well.

I look forward to seeing how the ebook reader and tablet game plays out. Personally, I’m much more interested in Android than any of Apple’s products, but since I haven’t put down hard cash yet (I’m still using a rather inadequate convertible tablet with many faults), I’m not yet fully committed.

For what it’s worth (very little), the key to a tablet for me would be having VNC for remote control. If I have internet and can hook up to my office PC, I’m a happy man. And since that’s available for both Android and iOS, how can I be truly disappointed?

 

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Governments Want to Control the Internet

Posted on October 3, 2011 by admin

No surprise there. Freedom of expression threatens would-be (and actual) tyrants. The Economist has some analysis.

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Headlines are Critical!

Posted on September 19, 2011 by admin

A headline board for the Isle of Wight County ...

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Every day I scan around 500 headlines from news services and blog posts. Of these, I will likely take action on around 30 or 40, and many of those will be standard ones that I put into various tags to display on my own blogs. I am unlikely to read more than five or six.

As I was doing this the other day, I realized how important this could be for some of my clients. We tend to spend most of our time writing content, and then slap a label on it. But that label could make the difference between getting your content read and having it ignored.

There are two mistakes to be avoided:

  1. The dull headline. This one gets missed. If your title reads “What I did today” I’m unlikely to look further.
  2. The inaccurate headline. This one gets me to open your post and read it, but when I get there, I’m annoyed, because it doesn’t contain the information your headline suggested it would. Thus I remove you from my feed reader.

I’m not a master of headlines, though I’ve written a few that I think were good. But you don’t need award winning headlines; just interesting and accurate ones.

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The Internet Will Never Work

Posted on August 20, 2011 by admin

So declared Clifford Stoll in a 1995 Newsweek article, now reproduced by The Daily Beast. There was actually a time when I thought the internet was for specialists, but I soon realized the error of my ways. (HT: The Agitator)

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