Sometimes it's best to take the Internet in small doses. It is sad to see how people get incredibly bent out of shape over the simplest things.

The other day, I saw a great web comic that touches on my line of work: usability. Awesome comic. Some of the comments, however, were... well, read them and see what I mean.

One of the best, however, sums up my feelings pretty well:

Dear Internet,

We used to have such a fun relationship. You would show me a picture of a fat guy in a motorized wheelchair pulling through the drive-thru doughnut shop. We would chuckle. You would give me multiple videos of men getting hit in the crotch by their sons with various objects. We would laugh. We would sometimes even cry thinking of our own twig and berries having an apple or an orange hurled in their direction. Then, instead of those apples and oranges you gave me the kind that attempts to break down a relatively clever internet comic into a failed productivity analysis of imaginary software. Where did you go so wrong? Did you simply grow up and lose all your giggles? I understand that we’ve all had a little piece of our soul killed by cats with bad grammar and poor sentence structure. I certainly know the trauma to our lighter side caused by the abomination known as Goatse. Don’t we still have a little bit of humor left in us though? Let’s try to find some more barely clever letters written in the 1st person towards some inanimate entity and have a giggle. I miss you fun internet. Come back please.

Your formerly pleased and entertained partner,
ME

I like the concept of electric cars. They are a good idea, but they bring their own host of problems.

At this point, they aren't in widespread use. According to Wikipedia, in 2006 there were about 53,500 in use in the US in 2006 with a total of about 250 million registered cars. That's about 0.02% of all registered cars.

So it begs the question: what will happen when, or if, electric cars become overwhelmingly popular? The major issue is that they would strain an already overburdened and aging electrical grid.

Switching all the cars to electric would greatly reduce CO2 emissions from cars, but we'd need more capacity from the electrical grid. And, at this moment, that means more coal plants which also emit CO2. Overall, it would still be a net reduction, but it's nowhere near the win situation that some people wish for.

Electric motors are more efficient than gasoline motors, but cars are heavy. So, cars have to be made lighter in order to truly reap the benefits of electric motors. This creates issues with traffic accidents. A lot of work is being done on improving materials and safety, but it is a definite risk for highway driving.

And, finally, what would happen to all the batteries? They aren't exactly bio-friendly. We'll need a better recycling program than we have now.

Despite this, electric cars are a good alternative to gas, and they are getting better. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out.

It looks like Dodge has been paying attention to Tesla. They've unveiled a sweet looking all-electric sports car. I bet it is still way way to unfordable for me, but it is still cool. :)

It was only a matter of time before someone created a wireless TV. Gizmodo talks about Sharp's new ultra-thin LCD that needs no cables. Imagine being able to hang your TV on any wall you want without ugly cables or having your walls custom wired! Very cool.

ZDNet reports on two "new" Apple products: The 16GB iPhone--meh--and... the 32GB iPod Touch! Still too small, but like the author said, it's tempting. :)

I can't believe it's been about a year and a half since I first wrote about the Tesla Roadster. I still think it is awesomely cool, even if it is impractical. Well, now Gizmodo reports that after being smashed to bits and pieces the Tesla Roadster is now street legal.

There is no mention of how rear and side impacts affect the batteries. I might have to look into that a bit more closely.

Penny Arcade pointed me at this amazing video about head tracking using the WiiRemote. It's all explained in the video, so go watch it.

That is some cool tech. It will make some amazing games if anyone ever follows up on it.

ArsTechnica has posted a great article about the EFF fighting RIAA's "attempted copyright infringement" argument. It's short and well worth reading.

The paragraph at the end of the article talks a bit about how "attempted copyright infringement" could be made illegal. That really bothers me. It is a "thought crime" since there is no need to prove intent. Look at it this way. If you left a book in a public (or semi-public) place, even for a moment, that would qualify as attempted copyright infringement since *anyone* could copy parts of the book without permission.

I believe copyright is important, but corporations such as RIAA need to be held accountable for the FUD they are spreading.

I never saw much need for the iPod Shuffle. I suppose for some people it's a great idea, but I have a large library and like listening to albums. On the other hand, I do like using the shuffle feature on occasion, but it is a bit of a pain: I find myself skipping over lots of songs that I don't really want to listen to.

I knew there had to be an easy way to fix this. Back in 7.0, Apple added the "skip when shuffling" feature to iTunes. At that time, they changed podcasts to be skipped by default.

So I used this feature to force my iPod to shuffle only certain songs.

So, in the main song list, I selected all the songs, right-clicked, picked "Get Info", and, near the bottom right of the dialog, set all the songs to be skipped by default. Since I already had a play list of my top rated songs, all I had to do was select the songs in that play list, right-click, "Get Info" and then change these songs to not be skipped during shuffle.

If you don't have a "Top Rated" play list, it is very easy to create: Just create a smart play list that only contains songs with ratings of 3 stars or up. Or you could use some other selection of songs that you prefer to shuffle on.

Anyway, now when I use shuffle, my iPod only shuffles the ones in my "Top Rated" play list.

Much better. :)

So, I go away on vacation, and Apple decides to announce iPod touch. They'll probably start shortening that to iTouch soon. Anyway, it's pretty much the same device I was hoping they would make. I'm glad AT&T didn't get in the way of the release.

Unfortunately, I think the iTouch is really crippled by having only 16 GB memory. Just how many movies and songs can you fit in 16 GB? Not much. Well, not enough for me. So, until they get closer to 80 GB, I won't be switching models very soon.

But, the really annoying thing is what SciFi Channel floated during Dragon Con. Without much justification, they are saying they will split season 4 of Battlestar Galactica in half, airing 10 episodes in 2008 and the remaining 10 in 2009!

Regardless of the upcoming screenwriter's strike, if SciFi follows through on this it will be a huge boneheaded maneuver. Let's see: SciFi gets rid of Dresden Files, puts on a lame Pain Killer Jane, puts on an even worse Flash Gorden and then decides to do this? There is desperation in the air.

Ars Technica has a good article on the new trojan going around that destroys all your .mp3 files. This sage piece of advice should be followed:

And that's why Cluley advises that users should turn off any autorun functionalities on their computers to prevent the worm from spreading.

If you aren't sure how to turn off auto, annoyances.org has the explanation. You should consider doing the same thing with USB drives, especially the U3 system.

While having autorun disabled can be an inconvenience--iTunes really doesn't like it--it is far better to deal with an occasional minor inconvenience than a major disaster at a later point in time. I certainly would hate to re-rip my 35GB of music files.

I find it very unlikely that "mischief makers" are the source of this trojan. First, since the damage is so targeted: it only deletes .mp3 files. Second, I think most of the so-called mischief makers would have large collections of .mp3 files themselves and would want to collect more .mp3 files, not destroy them. It seems far more likely that certain industry representatives have paid some "professional" hacker to whip up this trojan. After all, as far as RIAA is concerned, all .mp3 files are illegal.

People that use laptops and other wireless devices to browse the web now have one more worry: session hijacking is now ridiculously easy.

As explained in the article, once your session is hijacked the hacker becomes you, as far as the server is concerned. While hackers may not be able to change your password in this case, they can easily collect personal information for identity theft.

This type of hack has been a concern for many years, but has generally been ignored since it was considered unlikely to occur. Not any more.

I'd be surprised if Google doesn't move to make gmail more secure in the coming months. We'll see what other service providers do.

In the meantime, if you are using wifi to browse or to email then you might want to limit your sessions to brief windows of time. Also, ensure you log out once you are done. While no guarantee, this may help reduce your vulnerability.

New Scientist talks a bit about the recent heat transistor invention. It's definitely a cool invention, and one with a lot of potential uses. Cooling CPUs and other pieces of electronics will definitely be their major use.

The article mentions possibilities for "parasitic computing". One thought that comes to my mind is a heat switch. Multicore CPUs have a number of redundant components for calculations. A heat switch could be used to balance heat loads on these components.

Anyway, smarter people than I will be looking at this. But, since heat is the bane of computing, these new heat transistors will definitely help produce cooler, faster electronics in the future.

There is always a balance between security and privacy. But, people should know the rules of the game, so to speak. Wired has a good article on how the FBI used spyware to track down a teen making bomb threats. People should pay particular attention to this:

[The FBI's spyware] lurks on the target computer and monitors its internet use, logging the IP address of every computer to which the machine connects for up to 60 days.

Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance -- which does not capture the content of the communications -- can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the data when using the internet.

This may bother some people, but it is true. Any thing done on the net (email, browsing, etc) can potentially be seen by anybody so long as the information is unencrypted.

Now, it's one thing if the FBI's program is running on your ISP's machines, it's another thing if it's secretly running on your machine. What may be more disturbing is that there isn't a guarantee that anti-virus programs will inform you if they detect the FBI's software.

Another Wired article provides a good analysis of this issue.

As I said, there is a balance. I don't believe there is any reason why the FBI would monitor my browsing, but you never know. I've always known such information isn't private. They are welcome to such information if they really want it. But, I don't want any software running on my computer that I didn't install. So, if I find something I don't recognize, it will be removed.

CNET has an article about new patents filed by Apple relating to the iPod. CNET then goes on to speculate about "products like wireless iPods that haven't arrived yet."

I've had this discussion with a number of friends. We all believe there will be a major revision to iPods within 6-9 months. I believe I saw something from Apple to this effect as well. While I'd love to have a widescreen wifi iPod, it probably won't happen: AT&T probably has made sure that future Apple products won't cannibalize the iPhone market.

I really thought this would have happened before now. Remember the Sony root kit debacle? Sony is suing the company that produced the root kit.

"It's your fault we got caught! And your software is defective. You made people not like us! *sniff*"

The iPhone is pretty cool looking, I just wish it didn't come with the phone. :)

Apple should be making good money from the iPhone. There's an estimated 55% magin on each phone.

It seems that over the weekend, a bunch of spammers have used LJ and Blogger as hosts for comment spam. So, now sites that use Word Press will automatically mark any comment with an LJ website as spam and discard the comment.

If you are having problems posting comments at a site using Word Press, try leaving the website field empty.

The BBC reports on Teraflop chip with 80 processing cores. Sounds great. The only problem is that with the programming technology today, there is no way we could efficiently use such a chip.

Of course, that isn't the issue. I've read about holographic memory for over a decade now and it still hasn't been turned into a product. Perhaps it never will. But it has been used to spark new ideas and approaches to storage.

The same should be true of the Teraflop chip and similar technology. It makes me wonder if microkernels will be making a comeback.

This article on VoIP incompatibilities with security systems made me laugh:

"We never had major issues with [informing customers]," Primus spokesman Dmytro Marushkevych said, saying he had received few customer complaints.

If customers don't know there is a problem it's pretty unlikely they'll complain.

You'd think that the security company would contact the customer saying, "Hey, you know what? We haven't been getting any signals from your system. Is something wrong?"

There are going to be lawsuits from this one.