Check This Out

I don’t have a TiVo box, but if I had, and it was hooked up via my broadband connection, then I would keep this news a secret from my wife and kids

Imagine what it would do to your online gaming if your bandwidth suddenly got sucked up by the kids watching MTV, or the wife watching a show on Discovery Channel.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-09-tivo-brightcove_x.htm

Gizmodo has the story on - of all things - a dog umbrella.

This might be considered posh some sick place in the world, but not where I’m from.

For crying out loud - it’s an umbrella… for a dog…

Wonder how dogs and other animals have managed to survive and evolve through history without having umbrellas handy.

If I had spotted this a month ago I would have labelled it an April Fool’s joke.

Put this on your dogs, and this will happen:

1. Your dog will be scared to death.
2. Your dog will be embarassed to death.
3. You will be laughed at - loudly.
4. You will be prowned upon by people who actually care for their pets.
5. Your knees will begin to bleed after bouncing into the umbrella again and again
6. Your dog will be sent flying through the air if it’s windy.

your ISP?

A disturbing post on the potential loss of network neutrality caught my attention tonight.

Imagine getting a ransom note like this:

“We have captured your bandwidth - if you want to prevent your visitors from suffering slow load times, then do exactly what we tell you.”

“Be at the city square at exactly 12:00 - alone.”

“Bring $100.000 in small unmarked bills in a black sportsbag - leave the bag next to the bench”

“Do exactly as you’ve been told, and we will let visitors through to your site, so you don’t go out of business.”

“and remember, no cops, or else…”

Imagine what it would be like if it was your ISP that decided which sites you could watch - it begins to smell of censorship.
Imagine what it would be like to have your ISP selectively choose which sites should be delivered to you fast, and which should be delivered at a reduced speed - regardless of any agreement you have with them in terms of download speeds.

Imagine if it took you forever to load up amazon.com, but that bn.com loaded as fast as it has always done - just because Amazon didn’t pay your ISP the ransom they demanded.

This could end up as reality if we don’t do anything about it now.

Head over to http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/ and sign the petition - or else…

I really enjoy using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, but the way Firefox just handled the upgrade to 1.5.0.2 simply stinks

I was a breeze to upgrade, since Firefox automatically downloaded and installed it, but from there on it went downhill.

The positive news is that Firefox kept my bookmarks

The bad news is that it removed my theme and all my extensions.

So, is there a fast way to get all those extensions installed/upgraded again?

Well, I couldn’t find it, and now I have to go through the Firefox Extensions site and see if I can remember which extensions I had installed before.

It would have been nice it it had retained my list list of extensions and my themes, and just had me do a “search for upgrades” - but no.

This is simply not the best way to auto-upgrade a browser