I’ve just posted two PoSumOn albums. Ironically, the three of us joined up for a jam reunion the other day. It was really nice. We got to play with members of Dub Addis, a professional reggea band. Trey played guitar, I played bass, and Paul was on drums.
They wanted us to come back next week and jam again. DJ, Freso: See you there!
In class today, a group gave a talk on the IWAR website. I browsed around and found some images of leaflets dropped over Iraq during the U.S. military operations conducted under the name Operation Iraqi Freedom.
These images are almost as good as the WWII propaganda the U.S. military and intelligence agencies employed on U.S. citizens at that time.
Some of my favorites from this government archive include:
The Four Freedom posters
When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler
Nazi boot crushing a church
WANTED: For Murder!
All of this propaganda uses very effective imagery and language to get a desired reaction from the viewer. These particular examples are much more direct than The FOX News Network, which some claim is “the propaganda voice of the Bush administration”.
I wonder if the more direct propaganda style from WWII would be as effective today? I think not, because U.S. citizens would feel too intruded upon by the U.S. government. Folks in the U.S. like to read the reports from, say, a “fair and balanced” news source and then decide for themselves. However, it is this desire that propaganda groups could take advantage of.
By offering censored (or selected) information in the form of news and under the guise of, for the sake of argument: “Fair and Balanced”, an organization could take advantage of the viewers desire to form their own opinion from sensible reports on the facts, when in fact the viewer’s opinion would be based on inacurate, or incomplete, information and reports.
This is a nice write up on how propaganda works. It comes from a larger entry on propaganda which I found to be worth the read.
For fun, see how many instances of propaganda you can find on the drive home today! Wheee!
My brother recently turned me on to two fantastic extensions for Firefox.
“Firefox extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the browser to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download.” (Taken from the Firefox extension website)
There are two extensions that I have found to be very nice:
1) AdBlock
2) FlashBlock
These two extensions have helped me rid pages of banner ads and flash-based ads. It’s simple! When you encounter a banner ad on a website, right-click on the ad and choose “AdBlock”.
It will present you with the URI for the ad. It will look something like this:
http://ads.classifieds.com/cnn/ads/00123234-223.2/1223hhhasd/blah
That long string above is where the particular ad is originating. You can block this particular ad, or what I do is the following. I replace the long string above with something like this:
http://ads.classifieds.com/cnn/ads/*
Then I click “Block” after making this change. What this does is that it blocks any ad coming from that cnn classifieds site. After a few days of doing this your web browsing will start to become vacant of ads! This is because there are only a handful of major advertising servers out there. Blocking them will block most of the ads you run into online.
Flashblock, on the otherhand, will replace those eye-grabbing animated flash ads (you’ve seen them….they are the shoot the duck/badger/santa/bug to win a car/ipod/bike/cellphone/giftcard advertisements) with a blank square with a “Flash’ icon. You click the flash icon to activate the flash component. It’s very nice.
I suggest these to everyone who uses Firefox.
I use www.adquest3d.com to search for hammond organs for sale in the US. It is a nice classifieds search engine.
It allows you to limit you search to a mile radius from your zipcode, which is helpful. Another nice feature is that it provides the phone area code for each classified listing. I suppose someone would find this useful when looking for that “hard-to-find” yard sale item.
My work involves website layout and design. This type of work falls under HCI, or human-computer interaction.
Today in class, a group presented on the HCI Bibliography website. This website holds abstracts of publications writen on human-computer interaction.
Wow. What’s ironic is that this website, which is one that attempts to promote better human-computer interaction, is actually one of the worst webpages I’ve used.
The search feature is horrid. Even the director of this program comments on the poor search engine. The search only searches abstracts of records. There is no way to search the site itself.
For an example of how not to design a website, check it out. However, in all fairness, they may not have the resources to improve the interface. I’ll assume they are doing the best they can with what they have.
I ran across this story this evening. It claims that North Carolina taxpayers would be outraged if they knew how many hours are wasted by state employees playing solitaire on state computers.
But don’t worry about me. Although I am a North Carolina state employee, I use a Mac. The Mac doesn’t come with these types of distractions. Well, it does come with Chess installed by default.
The article says that legislators want to have games similar to and including solitaire removed from state owned computers. While this might fix the problem of employees playing solitaire, this solution fails to address the real issue. As I see it, the problem is not that employees are wasting time. The problem is that they have no work to do in the first place.
Perhaps the state legislature already knows this. This might explain the lack of state employee raises in the past few years. Could the state legislature be trying to trim down the excess positions within the state? This method would seem to be more effective than uninstalling solitaire on state computers. Not only could state employees turn to online game sites, which offer a plethora of games – including solitaire, but they may just find other unique ways to pass the hours away.
If the goal of the state legislature is to weed out lazy employees in an effort to give the state tax payers “more for their money”, the best solution, as I see it, is to reduce the budgets of state agencies.
Instead, by choosing to emphasize the uninstallation of solitaire on state computers, I must conclude that their goal is something else. Perhaps their goal is to raise public awareness of this particular issue? It’s all speculation.
One goal, however, is certain: To be re-elected. Perhaps in some way, they see this as a way to obtain that goal.
Hey y’all. I just finished up transfering an old JustJuan 4-track tape I found in the bottom of an old drawer. The sound could be better, but the tunes hold their own. Aw man, what am I saying!? These tunes ROCK! This content is under the “SmoothGroovinGrass” album. I can’t wait for my bro Sean to give them a listen. I’ve also added 4 songs from our Blue Shoe Magoo album. Sit back, turn up the stereo and enjoy!
I’ve noticed this odd behavior when closing 2 tabs in Firefox. It occurs, to my knowledge, only under Mac OS X, as I’ve tested it under Microsoft Windows and Fedora Core 2 Linux as well.
You can replicate the problem as follows:
1-Start Firefox
2-Open 2 new tabs (so you’ll have a total of 3 tabs open)
3-Locate the “X” that closes the current tab in Firefox
4-Quickly close two tabs by clicking the “X” twice, quickly
5-You’ll notice that you will close 2 tabs, but one new one will be created
6-Now, to understand more of why this is happening, double-click in the “grey” tab area, where there is no existing tab. You’ll notice that is creates a new tab.
Firefox should ignore clicks on the “X” as they apply to creating a new tab. As it stands, it seems as though Firefox counts a click on the “X” as a click towards creating a new tab.
I checked the Firefox bugzilla page and found that someone has already filed this bug.
Nice.
Early this past January, I placed an order with Musician’s Friend for an Alesis MultiMix 8USB mixer. This mixer was a nice standalone mixer, but could also function as a 2-in/2-out audio device through a USB connection. The price was right: $149
Although it was backordered, Musician’s Friend claimed that more would arrive in a week. Well, when that week went by, the “More Expected” date was advanced another week. This went on for a month, so I cancelled my order with them. I went in search for a reseller who had one to sell. One by one, the online retailers I searched came up empty handed. All were expecting more soon…
Another month went by, with at least 4 online retailers updating their “More Expected” date each week. This seemed strange. I wrote Alesis.
A representative from Alesis claimed that Alesis had not anticipated demand, and they were shipping some out soon to resolve this issue. That response came over 2 months ago, and online retailers are still selling it although “more are expected soon”. Yeah, right.
Through my conversations with Alesis, I discovered that mid-April (next month) their new MultiMix Firewire mixers are coming out. These mixers will offer 8-in/8-out over a Firewire connection and only cost $100 more than their USB counterparts that Alesis makes.
I feel sorry for the folks who are still waiting in line to get their MultiMix 8USB when the Firewire version is coming out so soon, for just a little bit more money.
One reseller told me over the phone that the MultiMix 8USB had been discontinued. They said that they learned this at a recent Alesis product conference. If this is true, it is disturbing. Why are online retailers still taking orders for a product that seems like it is never going to materialize?
My advice, to anyone who is thinking about “buying” an Alesis MultiMix 8USB, is to either 1)wait for the MultiMix Firewire mixers to come out or 2)look into an alternative product by a different vendor. I couldn’t find anything online regarding this shortage, so I hope this post is informative and helps at least one person out there who is wondering what’s going on.
Recently, I’ve been helping folks with their computing problems at home. I realized that one of the first things I do is download and install Firefox and Thunderbird.
Firefox is a web browser and I recommend it over Internet Explorer. From my experience as a support specialist, I’ve found that Internet Explorer is how the majority of spyware is installed on one’s computer. Firefox doesn’t allow spyware to enter your computer in the same way that Internet Explorer does. Firefox will import your Internet Explorer preferences and favorites for you. The installation takes only 3 minutes and can drastically improve the security and performance of your personal computer.
Thunderbird is an email client (like Outlook Express). In fact, I frequently migrate users from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. Like Firefox, Thunderbird will import your mail messages, addressbook, and preferences from Outlook Express. The switch from Outlook Express to Thunderbird is quick and fun. It’s nice knowing that Thunderbird is less susceptible than Outlook Express is to viruses, meaning you’ll be safer when sending and recieving emails.
Two more “must-have” free software applications include GIMP (an Adobe Photoshop replacement) and OpenOffice (an alternative to Microsoft Office – Word, Excel, Powerpoint). When I meet someone who wants to edit an image, type a MS Word document, analyze data in Excel, or create a Powerpoint slide show, I recommend they install one, or both, of these applications.
These 4 free programs give the user the same functionality as their commercial counterparts. And in the case of Firefox and Thunderbird, a user is much more secure when using them instead of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.