I recently called AT&T support for help setting up my new iPhone 3G.
The AT&T menu system wouldn't recognize numbers entered via my iPhone dialer.
Initially the menu recited my mobile number and asked me to press 1 to verify it was correct. I pressed one and was then asked to enter my mobile number. After entering my mobile number I was asked to enter it again in an endless loop.

Does anyone else think that is funny that Firefox has way better search capabilities than that of Search engine giant Google's Chrome?

I am sure this will get fixed. Google does have some really nifty search features like hashmarks along the scrollbar allowing you to see all matches at a glance. This is similar to most diff and merge applications, but Chrome doesn't seem to be able to search in form fields. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

The new Custom Search tool from Google is Awesome. Now you can put a custom search on your site and not only have it search your own site, but as many other sites as you want. There are fine customization controls, and the possibillities are endless. For example, check out the custom L.A.M.P. search block in the top right. This custom search block took seconds to create and searches perls.org, search.cpan.org, php.net, mysql.com, drupal.org and api.drupal.org. I will add more to it in the future, but I am really impressed with the usefullness of this tool.

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Kubuntu 8.04 Completely Rocks!!!

On my T60, it is almost like having a completely new laptop. Everything is so much faster, almost twice as fast. My wireless networks seems to be to be faster. All desktop actions, quanta, kontact, everything. I am also very impressed with all of the application updates. Kontact now allows placing the sig before the quoted message. The digiKam Gallery2 sync allows setting the caption to be the title or description now, and allows uploading by album or tag. Everything just seems to be working faster / better.

I am a BSD fan, although I primarily run Linux for my desktop. I have been considering moving to Mac because well, their hardware is sexy! I do resent their marketing, mostly because everything they do is a new idea even though it is usually 10 years old. Well, I could give many legitimate mostly geeky reasons why I dislike Apple, but I have really been considering getting a macbook pro. Well, not any more. Not ever.

Read this post to learn why
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/05/2123207

I hope it changes your mind too.
Be Free, Install Linux or FreeBSD

Yesterday I thought I would try the latest Kubuntu beta.
I installed the Beta on an older HP R3000. I downloaded the 64 bit version in hopes that 64 bit support had gotten better for things like Skype. Initially I was not that impressed.

I had troubles getting the Broadcom wireless card working and had a couple of other issues as well. The Broadcom thing has always been a problem in Ubuntu, usually requiring blacklisting drivers and installing ndiswrapper. I am sure I could have gotten this working with some more effort, but that isn't the point. PCLinuxOS 2007 walks you through loading ndiswrapper litterally making this process a breeze.

What A difference a day makes in open source.
Today I reinstalled, and did a full update. This time everything worked flawlessly. I think the problem previously might have been that I clicked through the hardware settings manager too fast. After clicking on an item you have to wait for the driver to download and install, but the checkbox you are clicking just says enable leading you to think it is just disabled. Clicking multiple items opens up multiple versions of adept and causes bad things to happen. A simple GUI fix could have prevented my user error. Anyway, everything installed perfectly and worked without any configuration. I am no longer using ndiswrapper for my broadcom wireless adapter. Nvidia-glx drivers installed for me, as did compiz. Compiz is now somewhat integrated into the desktop which is wonderful. No compiz icon or configuring a custom session needed.

This is wonderfull!

I read an article today about perceived value in operating systems. Basically the article stated that end users perceive Windows to have greater value than Linux because of the price tag. While I agree that this is probably the case, I completely disagree with anyone who claims windows has more value than Linux.

There are some functions in actionscript that take uint in the form of argb and hex. It took me a while to figure out why my fills where not visible!
 
For instance
fillRect(rect:Rectangle, color:uint):void
fills a rectangular area of pixels with a specified ARGB color.
and
 
beginFill(color:uint, alpha:Number = 1.0):void
Specifies a simple one-color fill that Flash Player uses for subsequent calls to other Graphics methods (such as lineTo() or drawCircle()) for the object.
 
The graphics.beginFill function will take a uint containing standard HTML hex colors such as 0xEEEEEE (grey) or 0xFFFFFF (white)
wheras the fillRect takes an ARGB value as a uint
0xFFEEEEEE ( grey with opaque alpha) or 0xFFFFFFFF ( white with opaque alpha).
 
Converting between the two is just a matter of adding or subtracting the alpha.
 
so a hex uint (grey) 0xEEEEEE + an argb  Alpha 0xFF000000  will give you the  proper ARGB value without any need for conversion or type castsing.
 
 I hope this helps someone out.

Microsoft Genuine Advantage seems more of a disadvantage to me!
It seems like every time I go to install windows updates, office updates or download from Microsoft, my computer wants to download and install the Microsoft genuine advantage active x control. It upset me enough the first time, but now it is annoying. It is partly because of these annoyances that I hardly use windows anymore.
In Debian I can just say apt-get dist-upgrade from a terminal and thats it. No annoyances!

I realize that free software has an advantage in this respect. No agreements to click on to install software, no
license codes, no "you paid money for this so let us watch what you are doing". It almost seems backwards. If I pay for something, I should be able to use it without restriction and have fewer annoyances, but order to confirm that I did indeed buy it, I am subjected to the annoyance of confirming I own the software. There has to be a better way!

Currently the free software feels much more like ownership than purchased software, and since it is open source, I guess it is more like ownership.

Can I get an Amen!