LUX.ET.UMBRA

Terrible business practice. I’m surprised anyone would even consider keeping the USF replacement fees after they did the lobbying and claimed it would help the consumer. It also tells you how Verizon and BellSouth react to their consumers. It’s basically an “We don’t care about our users” attitude.
Here, as bad PR flares up in their face, they withdraw and run. Read all the gory details here. We covered the shamefulness before.
Via Engadget

Tags: Business, Internet by darkmoon
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Comcast is pulling a terrible one. They’re blocking domains left and right, including The Well. They also blocked alum.mit.edu apparently according to the Slashdot writer.
What this is, is a bunch of bad management along with non-educated technical staff that goes around doing blocks instead of being transparent. Spam is a huge ISP issue, but they shouldn’t just block domains unless they’re legitimate spam domains. They can check that with projects like Spamhaus. Very very bad technical behavior on the side of Comcast and reflects poorly to any Comcast users.
Via Slashdot

Tags: Internet, spam by darkmoon
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I wonder if there are government subsidies for getting power back to millions of people each year. This would explain a lot about why power companies refuse to put the power underground in the South.
The logic goes something like this. If the South doesn’t have terrible earthquakes, nor does it have bad landslides like on the west coast. But most of the damage is done above land via wind and water (ie. hurricanes/thunderstorms). This happens annually and it’s no surprise when it’s hurricane season again.
So if there are subsidies, why aren’t they removed and put in place as incentives to dig those ditches and stick the lines in the ground? If there aren’t, someone should force the power companies hand to do so. Like it or not, I for one am sick of my power flickering or going out when the slightest summer storm comes by and shakes its fist. It’s time that we stand up and force the hand of energy companies. Either that or hope that the Steorn challenge is real.

Tags: Life, Personal, Society by darkmoon
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Contig is created by those famous guys from SysInternals. Contig defrags files instead of drives via the Windows console and is extremely useful when you know there isn’t any need to defrag a whole drive. Supports Windows NT4 and higher.
Just type: contig “filename” (lose the quotes)
There are other flags to use, but that’s the easiest one.
Lifehacker < SysInternals

Tags: Tips and Tricks, Windows by darkmoon
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There’s bad marketing, and then there’s total “oops”. The marketing team for Dell totally missed this one when they released their latest commercial. Look for the emphasized lines in this conversation.

(14:57:04) devnullgod: Have you paid attention to the song lyrics that are playing in the background?
(14:57:11) Darkmoon: nope
(14:57:22) devnullgod: And I quote: “My heads an empty box and thats the way I like it.”
(14:57:30) Darkmoon: lol
(14:57:50) devnullgod: Now is an empty box for a head not the absolute best description for a Dell user.
(14:58:02) devnullgod: I can’t believe the marketing team didn’t catch that.
(14:58:04) Darkmoon: lol
(14:58:11) Darkmoon: bad choice of music. heh
(14:58:14) Darkmoon: they probably picked it
(14:58:18) devnullgod: I’m serious, the music melody is fine, just don’t play the lyrics.

What’s interesting is that the song is actually called “Catch My Disease” by Ben Lee and the lyrics are actually, “my head is a box filled with nothing and thats the way i like it.”

[Read more →]

Tags: Business by darkmoon
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Sometime when you have some free time, do a check against a watch when you get one of those parking tickets in garages. Then check again when you’re leaving and pay at the attendant. Many times, the parking lots purposely off-sync the entry clock and exit clock. This way if you manage to cut it close to an hour, then they can charge you for the next time period up.
It might not happen at some garages, but from what I’m told, it seems to happen at a few of them. Very sneaky, and definitely unethical.

Tags: Society by darkmoon
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HideWin is a 32k small file that allows you to hide your windows. Supported in all mannerisms of Windows in existence and is freeware. Takes us back to the day when Alt-Tab was the only way to shift between a game and a spreadsheet. Ahh. Those were the days.
ZDNetIndia < HideWin

Tags: Tips and Tricks, Windows by darkmoon
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We suppose this was long coming, but Christians rejoice. There is also a linux for you. A site called What Would Jesus Download? has released Ubuntu: Christian Edition. They also have a site called Linux for Christians. Included in Ubuntu CE is GnomeSword, a Bible study program, and Dan’s Guardian, a web content filter tool where the parental control settings have been modified for Ubuntu CE. All in all, it’s your basic linux distro with some whistles geared towards Christianity.
When the Church won’t come to linux, bring linux to the church. Nice.
BoingBoing < UbuntuCE

Tags: Linux, Religion by darkmoon
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Volumouse allows you to set control of your volume through your mouse scroll wheel. Supported from Windows 98 to XP. Freeware. Pretty useful for those without keyboards with volume control.
Lifehacker < Nirsoft

Tags: Tips and Tricks, Windows by darkmoon
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Google has this great tool where you can check your site status and when the last time Google’s crawlers went bonkers on your site. It also allows you to install sitemaps to show you statistics of your sites for which you might be able to optimize better.
Lifehacker < GoogleSiteStatus

Tags: Google by darkmoon
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