The 4400 Returns!

I’m so happy to see that USA is bringing back The 4400 for a second season! The first season ended without gives viewers any answers, and, frankly, I felt a little ripped off. (Not as bad as when X-Files ended, but still…)  At the time, the USA website didn’t mention anything about another season and I don’t think they even knew at the time whether or not there would be one. I guess they decided to do it - thank you, Mr. Programming Director! So set your Tivos for Sunday, June 5th at 9 PM. And since it’s been awhile, catch up by watching the Season 1 marathon on the day before the premier.

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As soon as I saw the new Creative Zen Neeon, I knew this was the mp3 player I’ve been waiting for. I fell in love with it. Why? Because I’m a sucker for packaging. The Neeon has 7 different changeable LED backlights on each player, plus there are 10 colorful metal faceplates to choose from. What I really love, though, are the Creative stik-ons - easily changeable decorative skins that come in one of 4 themes. The picture features a stik-on from the Eden collection. (By the way, I’m not typo-ing…it’s really spelled "stik-on" and "neeon.") The tech specs aren’t bad either: 5 GB capacity, 16-hour rechargeable lithium battery, and built-in voice recorder. No word on a release date or pricing yet.

UPDATE!!

My email to Creative requesting availability info got this response:

Dear Customer,

The Creative Zen Neeon listed on our international website (http://www.creative.com) is not available in our North American region at this time.  We have received no indications as to if or when this product will be made available in our North American region.  If it is made available, it will be displayed on our North American website, so please continue to watch our regional website (http://us.creative.com) for updates or contact us periodically to see if we have received any word on this product, via email or by calling 1-800-998-1000.  We apologize for any inconvenience, please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

No fair!

The Paris Hilton TMobile Sidekick hack was good ol’ fashioned social engineering. The crime "only succeeded after one member of a small group of hackers tricked a T-Mobile employee into divulging information that only employees are supposed to know." The hackers had gained access to internal TMobile network pages by calling a store and asking for the information while posing as someone from TMobile headquarters investigating network problems. The employee told them the URL to the internal  site and their username and password. Once the hackers had that information, they were in. The rest was easy. Full story here.

Microsoft has developed an anti-spyware tool to help you protect your computer from spyware and other unwanted software. In recent PCWorld tests, the Microsoft AntiSpyware tool had high detection rates (91%) and it was noted that the software was very easy to use (I’m guessing "dumbed down"). Still, the best part is that the tool is free. Currently, the software is a public beta available here for download. However, before downloading, users are prompted to validate their copy of Windows. You can click "no", but something about the big brother aspect of this bothered me. Will the Microsoft goons show up at your door, having mapped your IP to a location, to bust you? Probably not…but I don’t like the thought. Not that I need to click "no" or anything….

Please tell me this cat is not blogging! And why does he get more comments than me? Just curious…

And speaking of pointless blogging…how about The Abandoned Blog? Why bother?

In a significant step for the open source movement, IBM has now begun to offer its employees internal downloads and support for the Firefox web browser. Firefox was already used by about 10%  of the staff before the internal downloads were offered. That number is now sure to increase. IBM wants to lessen its dependence on IE as well as save money in the future as the company can use open source addtions to Firefox. Once again, Go Firefox!

Source: CNET

A local Tampa radio station’s morning show has a listener who may know where one of the treasures from A Treasure’s Trove is located. If you don’t know what A Treasure’s Trove is, it’s a book that contains hidden clues to the locations of various tokens. The tokens are turned in for one of 12 jewels that have a combined worth of $1,000,000.00. The jewels themselves are one-of-a-kind pieces and all are an insect of some sort. Maybe not something I’d wear, but definitely something I’d sell for cash! Now where can I get a copy of this book? Amazon…?

What’s this? A Web Accelerator from Google? They have everything! At first, I almost bypassed this story on CNetNews.com, since I tend to think of web accelerators as tools for dial-up users only. However, glacing at the story, a quote caught my eye: "As fast as broadband is, it’s still not as fast as it could be," Marissa Mayer said (Google’s director of Web products). "Think of Google as your proxy. In exchange, we’ll try to make the Web faster for you." Cool. So what does Google get from this, you wonder? Google’s belief is if people are surfing faster and using the web more, it will result in more searches at Google…and more searches means more ad clicks. Unfortunatley, the web accelerator is still in beta and the home page says they’ve maxed out the number of users for now. Interestingly, though, the download page is still active.

In a time where the FCC and MPAA and the like are over-exerting their powers to control, limit, and out-and-out stop the sharing of copyrighted material, seeing the FCC lose this battle was a great moment for a TV fanatic like myself.

Via CNET:

Under the FCC rules, starting in July digital TV tuner manufacturers would have had to include the broadcast flag. The flag limits a person’s ability to redistribute video clips made from the recorded over-the-air broadcasts…In general, consumers would have been able to record broadcast-flagged shows and movies, but would only be able to play them back on the same device…The three judges on the appellate panel foreshadowed this week’s decision by suggesting that the FCC had overstepped what the law permits. "You’re out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?" asked Judge Harry Edwards. Quipped Judge David Sentelle: "You can’t regulate washing machines. You can’t rule the world."

Ah, yes, but the FCC wants to rule the world and surely will appeal this decision. The question of "fair use" seems to be the issue everywhere these days. Why is it that I can use a VCR to tape a TV show and give the tape to a friend, but burning a DVD of downloaded TV shows (via a TV torrents website, for example) is in question? The torrents represent shows that someone, someshare is sharing. We’re not playing them for audiences or making money off of them. We’re just watching TV in our home home…it just so happens that we’re watching on the PC instead of the TV.

The same with MP3s. Mix tapes were never an issue, though I spent YEARS of my youth taping my favorite songs off the radio or using a friend’s tape collection in one of the handy-dandy dual-decked boom boxes to create my own special mix. But now, an MP3 shared via Peer-2-Peer is an illegal activity…and one you could be sued for!

Perhaps the problem is the scale - mix tapes and VCRs are "casual copying" between friends whereas P2P and BitTorrent are strangers sharing entire collections of music and movies with hundreds and thousands of other strangers. Still, the concept is the same: OK to share, not OK to sell. However, I still say, depsite the availability of MP3s, AVIs, etc on the internet today, consumers will still buy the CD, the DVD, etc. for the added content…lyrics, photos, deleted scenes, shorts, higher quality sound or picture, or even just because the packaging makes it special. When you pay for something, you should get something better than freebie file you could have downloaded. And THAT is the way the "pay-for-me" copyrighted material should be marketed - "Sure, you can get it free, but buy it and get MORE!"

From WashingtonPost.com: As people grow more and more dependent on technology in their day-to-day lives, the loss of data, computer crashes and freezes can be devastating. Support technicians are being trained to not only fix the problems, but to also deal with the psyches of their affected customers.

"There’s this frustration that you are really dependent on these things that you don’t understand and that you have no idea how to fix," said Kent L. Norman, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Automation Psychology and Decision Processes. "We place so much trust in computers that it gets a little scary."

This brings in a new aspect to the once-impersonal I.T. industry: caring.

This story takes me back, years ago, when myself, a computer newbie bought her first PC (a lemon from Gateway). The computer constantly crashed to the BSOD point. I had numerous walk-throughs on the phone with the help of the support technicians on how to re-install Windows. The frustration I felt back then was bad enough, but I had not amassed collections of photos and mp3s (what were mp3s?) that were lost forever. I cannot even fathom the rage and sick-to-the-stomach feeling that your average PC user faces when dealing with a crashed PC. It must be terrifying, enraging, horrible. I feel lucky that I now know enough about computers to keep mine relatively safe. Still nothing beats a good backup plan. Mine: 2 hard drives of data and 1 for the OS. My OS can crash and my stuff is safe…including my 80 GB mp3 collection.