I am a news junkie, I love to read the news from many sources and (try to) keep up with what is going on in the world.  One of the sites I frequent a lot is the Drudge Report, and anyone who has been there will know that (to me anyway) one really annoying thing about that site is the constant page refreshing.  Maybe this is done in an attempt to load more banner ads or something, but it gets on my nerves when I keep losing my place as I am reading articles.

So, in my attempt to find an easy way to stop the Drudge Report website from refreshing every second or so (OK, maybe not EVERY second), I came across a nifty little plugin for Firefox that allows you to blacklist websites and thus stop them from running scripts.  In this case that also meant that Drudge no longer refreshes while I am reading the news.  It’s a lot like the NoScript plugin that we have talked about before, except that instead of deny all and permit by exception, this one is the other way around.  Everything is white listed by default and you blacklist sites that you don’t want to run scripts.  It works great for me, and I have found it to be quite useful.  I have added it to the Must Have Firefox Extensions page in the Library, go check it out and while you are there, see what other ones we talk about.  Enjoy!

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Recently I have been having trouble with my NetFlix instant watch service.  On several occasions I get odd DRM errors telling me that the date on my PC is set to (insert current date here) and to check and make sure it’s correct, which it is.  I don’t think I am the only person having this problem because when I fired up trusty ol’ Google, I found lots of other folks complaining about and seeking solutions for NetFlix DRM errors as well.  Not all of them shared my exact error number, but they all sounded faily similar in what was happening.

As I searched, I found a few things to try and although none helped me, some helped other folk so I will list them here anyway.  Finally, the explanation and solution that worked for me actually made a lot of sense once I digested it, and I bet it will help some of you out there as well. 

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I thought I would post some information about a project that I started a few months ago called nix32.  It’s hosted on SourceForge for the most part, with a handy website that I host myself mainly because it’s just easier to manage that way.  The basic goal of this project is to create native command line tools for Windows that operate much like the commands that we know and love from Linux and UNIX.  Things like ls, mv, cp, df and so on.  I have become so used to, comfortable with and productive with the UNIX/Linux command line environment, that when I have to leave it behind on Windows, it’s pretty tough.  Not just changing from what I am used to, but also because I think the command line of a UNIX/Linux server is much more powerful and flexible than the Windows command line, even including the power shell.

I have been working on the more popular commands, and I have a few basics out now with basic functionality.  I hope to have more and better (improved) tools in the future.  I am writing everything in PERL and then compiling each one on Windows as a standalone exe using tools from ActiveState, and so far, they run very nicely.  It’s all completely open source, you can download the PERL scripts as well as the executable files if you want to take a look or help improve them.

Now, I know you can get similar results with other projects and products out there, CYGWIN comes to mind first.  However, that’s a whole separate shell and almost a little mini-Linux setup in and of itself, especially looking at the directory structure after it’s installed.  Here with the nix32 project I wanted to have native Windows executables that you can stick in your path somewhere and call right from the Windows Command Prompt, without ever leaving the Windows environment and without having to install anything.  So far that is exactly what we have, just copy the files somewhere, make sure it’s within or added to your PATH variable, and you are good to go!

So check it out, see what you think, spread the word and maybe even help out a bit and crunch a little code too.  Do whatever you feel and keep both feet on the wheel … or, keyboard maybe. 

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You want to know one of the things that really draws my ire?  I mean really makes me want to uninstall your pathetic excuse for a piece of software, remove any remnants or traces of it having ever been near my machine in the first place, destroy the CD it came on with fire called down from the heavens and send ravenous zombie hordes to your home office?  It’s when some developer douche bag decides that he knows what I want more than I do.

I don’t mind if you ask me, give me a choice, but not every damn program out there needs to put one or more items into my system tray to load there every time the computer starts and slow down my startup time, eating away at memory and CPU power.  Normally this is under the guise of “speeding up the application”.  Well, I say that if you need all of those pre-loaders to make your application function acceptably, maybe you should go back to Fortran 101 and learn to write good code in the first place!

What’s worse, are the damn services that get installed and started that we don’t even know about.  Why does a simple media player need a web server?  Why does my GPS management app want or need to check out my hard drive at night?  Have all developers taken refuge at the throne of Bill Gates and Lenovo or something?

“We have a right to look at the user’s private information because they bought our crap.”  or “We don’t need to worry about writing tight, efficient bug free code, we’ll just tell the customer to by a new computer and get more kick backs from Intel.”

Not to mention the shift away from ownership to leasing.  Now when you “buy” software, you really are only “buying” a license that allows you to use it for a period of time.  Screw that noise, man.  If I am interested in a certain product and see that kind of license, ffft it’s gone and I am looking at something else.

This is just one reason why Open Source software is so damn good and popular.  Microsoft and the other behemoths of the commercial software industry want to come out and tell everyone that free software isn’t really free, it costs you more than the expensive slop that they sell.  The thing is, they don’t get it.  We don’t mean free as in dollars, we mean free as in spirit and ethics.  You get some open source code and you may spend a few bucks to implement it or get some support, or you may not, either way it is completely open.  All of the source code is there so you can make damn sure no one is spying on you or stealing information from you.  You can make a change to the app if you feel like it so that it fits better to your needs, instead of only getting “good enough”.  It’s free like the wind and water cascading down the mountain, and brothers and sisters, that’s a great place to be.

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And a heads up!  I added a link to the links section here on the Solarum site, and it made me want to drop a note up here to remind folk about that particular section.  The links section is where I post links to various and sundry things that appear to be useful or humorous to folk in one way or another.  So, you might want to check it out because you never know what you might find, like today where I just posted a link to a the great game Baseball Mogul version 6 since it has been released for free by the company that makes it.  Come back often and check that links section out, lots of goodies in there.

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As technology moves ever onward, getting more and more complex, it becomes more and more important to know what you have and what it can do.  In this case I am talking about graphics cards and figuring out what Shader Model it supports.  I am seeing more and more games that have not only memory and processor requirements listed, but also things like what Shader Model and DirectX version your hardware supports.

I ran into this recently and although the DirectX version is easy enough to find out, the Shader Model was a bit tougher.  So, after working through the problem and gathering some information from around the ‘net, I have put together some instructions and a handy reference chart for you that should make figuring this out a bit easier. Read the rest of this entry »

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