Recently in Rants Category

I really enjoy science fiction, I grew up reading Asimov, Poul Anderson, Fred Saberhagen, Heinlein, Piers Anthony, Larry Niven, and a host of others. And I love watching science fiction shows on TV, even the poorly made ones from years gone by. Like most fans of the genre, I can enjoy the shows for what they are and not concern myself when I notice the strings that hold the models, the fake backdrops, and the host of other flaws in older shows.

When the SciFi network first launched, they did a decent job at bringing various shows to their lineup, but lately they've really been slipping.

Well, for about a week now I've been trying to get the AvantGo support staff to send me a link to a .CAB installer so I can install the software on my PocketPC without having to sync with a Windoze system. I'm beginning to feel that English is not a language they fully comprehend there.

Their presumably form replies are nicely written, but are not bearing any resemblance to the problem I'm presenting them with. I usually don't mind emailing tech support folks, but when they don't even bother to try understanding the problem and are forced to stick with their 'script', it can be darned frustrating the for customer.

An iTune, that is. CNET reports on Pepsi's iTunes promotion which began at the Superbowl this year, hoping to give away up to 100 million iTunes. Instead, only 5 million songs were actually redeemed.

What the article doesn't mention was Pepsi's supply problems getting these out to the folks that wanted them. Personally, I never saw one of these bottles in the grocery stores I go to locally, though I did manage to find a few at a local convenience shop, and the local 7-11 briefly had specially marked 32oz cups at their soda fountain, which I promptly filled with Diet Dr. Pepper. Of the 5 promo items I purchased, I managed to only win a single song.

Here I am, minding my own business, and I decide to run Analog again tonight to see what sort of activity my web site has been getting. My site has been running about a week, and Analog usually came back with a report in about 30 seconds or so. So I wait, watching little status messages go by, wait some more, thinking 'hmmm, must have had a few visitors today', and wait some more...

To shorten the suspense (I could have gone on for a while there), what was a 30 second report last night has been going on for 12 HOURS tonight! And the source of all this? Apparently it's a combination of some IIS WebDAV exploits (whatever that is), the CodeRED worm (I remember hearing about that), and some other worm/virus/Microsoft product that's attacking anything with an IP address...

First of all, I know that M$ this week released like four MAJOR patches to its OS. I'm so glad that security is such a large focus for them, but sheesh, couldn't they have fixed some of these problems a few years ago when they shipped the OS to begin with? It's no wonder that Longhorn has apparently been pushed back another year...