Two weeks ago Apple at the Macworld conference released a few goodies. The MacBook Air, an overpriced sub notebook, supposedly ships today. But no doubt us resellers will maybe see one in about three weeks.

A more approachable update was the abillity to rent movies off of iTunes, but they have yet to put a decent selection on there, "more selection to come by February". And then new releases won't even show up until 30 days after the actual release date to give physical DVD rental stores a break. On top of all that, the software update to the Apple TV to allow rentals directly to the unit without using a computer has been delayed two weeks now.

So I proclaim this the "Year of the Delay" 

On October 31st 2007 as reported in many places, there's a new OS X malware in the wild, first reported by Intego, who named it OSX.RSPlug.A

How to remove the malware:
    1.    In the Finder, navigate to /Library -> Internet Plug-Ins, and delete the file named plugins.settings. Empty the trash. This deletes the tool that sets the rogue DNS Server information.
    2.    In Terminal, type sudo crontab -r and provide your admin password when asked. This deletes the root cron job that checks the DNS Server settings. You can prove it worked by typing sudo crontab -l; you should see the message crontab: no crontab for root.
    3.    Open your Network System Preferences panel, go to the DNS Server box, and copy the entries you can see to a Stickies note, TextEdit document, or memorize them. Now retype those same values in the box, then click Apply.
    4.    Reboot your Mac.

The only people who should be infected are those who have broken the number one rule of internet computing: don't download and install programs [especially those that are (a) package installers that (b) request your admin password] from untrusted sources.

Check out this video from A Fine Frenzy.

To restart the WindowServer, which handles the graphical part of the system. Just do that in Terminal, with this command:

sudo killall -HUP WindowServer

Warning: All your opened programs will quit immediately! This is like a restart, but of only the graphical part of the system. Quit your open programs first! You have been warned.

Griffin Technology has me sold on their products. Two in particular. I love my TiVo and I love the radio, unfortunately most of the shows that I like to listen to happen while I am at work. So I purchase Griffin's radioSHARK2. The wonder usb device was just what I needed. I can use it to turn my computer into a radio, but more importantly is the fact that I can set it to record any at any time that I want and also time shift recording on the fly if I am listening to something and it is something that I just need to finish listening to but have to go do something else for the moment. It's Tivo for the radio.

Of course it does get better. The recordings that it performs go directly into iTunes then onto my iPod. From there I plug their iTrip into the iPod and listen tho the shows over the radio in the truck, thus making long business drives more intertaining. These two devices from Griffin save my sanity on the long drives that I do through out the huge state of Montana.

Need help finding an empty radio frequency for the iTrip, Griffin has released this site to help. 

Once again a third installment of a franchise rescues the series. Number two was fair but did not have that flair the first had (or was that the eleventh?)

Oceans 13 cam back to it's roots and found footing once again. Yes you had to forego that you would never truely know what a "Billy Martin" was or is, but that is the fun of it. More fun is the over all enjoyment that you can tell everyone had making it. Was it our positive reinforcement that brought them around from deaths door like Rueben in this one. I for one was pulling for them, hoping they had a third good one left in them.

Al pacino had his normal fierceness that he brings to a role, but I could have done without all the make up he was wearing. It was nice to see the brothers get more air time with their revolution. And the banter between Clooney, Pitt and Damon aged like a fine wine. 

One can only hope that they have seen this good fortune at the roulette whell of the box office and have decided to quit while their chips are up. 

Not really interested. Maybe it is a pitiful choice in host; maybe it is lack of movies I have see. Or maybe it is the fact that somehow Al Gore is nominated. Come on all of America said no to him as a president; hopefully Hollywood will say the same (doubt it with as liberal as they all are). I am sure I will watch and I hope The Departed sweeps the place with wins.

See you at the after party.

The winners are...

Scientific American has done research to explain that online dating is still about looks and deceit.

[Source: Scientific American ]

January 30, 2007

The Truth about Online Dating

The hype is huge, and the findings are somewhat disturbing--but the future of online dating looks good

By Robert Epstein

About two years ago I arranged to meet for coffee with a woman I had corresponded with online. I arrived early and sat at a table in a conspicuous spot. After a few minutes, a woman came to my table, sat down and said with big smile, "Hi, I'm Chris!"
But Chris was not the woman in the online photos. This wasn't a question of an age discrepancy or a new hairdo. She was a completely different woman. Chris was in marketing, you see, and to her it was simply a good strategy to post photographs that would draw in as many "customers" as possible. I never said a word about the photos. I just enjoyed our conversation and the refreshments. A few weeks later I noticed that Chris had replaced the photos with those of yet another woman.

In the U.S. alone, tens of millions of people are trying to find dates or spouses online every day. How accurate are the ads they find? And just how successful is online dating compared with conventional dating? These and other questions have recently stimulated a small explosion of studies by social scientists. The research is quickly revealing many surprising things about the new world of online dating, and some of the findings could be of great value to the millions who now look to the Internet to find love.
Deception at Light Speed
Experiences such as the one I had with Chris are multiplying by the thousands: some people online lie quite drastically about their age, marital or parental status, appearance, income or profession. There are even Web sites, such as www.DontDateHimGirl.com, where people go to gripe, and a few lawsuits have been filed against online services by disgruntled suitors. Just how bad is deception in online dating?

To put this issue in context, bear in mind that deception has always played at least a small role in courting. One could even argue that deception is a necessary part of wooing a potential partner ("Yes, I love sports!") and even of forming successful long-term relationships ("No, that dress doesn't make you look fat at all!").

But cyberspace introduces a host of new possibilities. Survey research conducted by media researcher Jeana Frost of Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that about 20 percent of online daters admit to deception. If you ask them how many other people are lying, however--an interviewing tactic that probably gets closer to the truth--that number jumps to 90 percent.

Because self-reported data can be unreliable, especially those from people asked to confess bad things about themselves, several researchers have sought objective ways to quantify online deception. For example, psychologist Jeffrey Hancock of Cornell University and communications professor Nicole Ellison of Michigan State University bring people into a lab, where they measure height and weight and then check the numbers against those in their online profiles. The preliminary data suggest that, on average, online profiles shave off about five pounds and add perhaps an inch in height. According to Ellison, although deception is "fairly common, the lies are of a very small magnitude." On the other hand, she says that the shorter and heavier people are, the bigger the lies.
In another attempt to collect objective data on deception, economists Guenter Hitsch and Ali Hortaçsu of the University of Chicago and psychologist Dan Ariely of M.I.T. compared the heights and weights of online daters with the same statistics obtained from national census data. Like Hancock and Ellison, they found that online height is exaggerated by only an inch or so for both men and women but that women appear to understate their weight more and more as they get older: by five pounds when they are in their 20s, 17 pounds in their 30s and 19 pounds in their 40s.

For men, the major areas of deception are educational level, income, height, age and marital status; at least 13 percent of online male suitors are thought to be married. For women, the major areas of deception are weight, physical appearance and age. All of the relevant research shows the importance of physical appearance for both sexes, and online daters interpret the absence of photos negatively. According to one recent survey, men's profiles without photos draw one fourth the response of those with photos, and women's profiles without photos draw only one sixth the response of those with photos.