It has been a couple of days since I received my
new Dell 24" widescreen TFT monitor. I must say that this is probably one of my best purchases in the last couple of weeks :-) . The desktop is huge. Lots of windows, and still there's space to put more stuff on it.
Besides the large screen (1920*1200), it has USB, 7-1 cardreader and 5 or 6 video inputs (I lost track counting :-) ).
There is only one regret..... I should have bought two
Some large ISP's here in the Netherlands will block about 3000 websites, which are known to host child pornography. Several other ISP's are thinking to follow. Even my own ISP XS4ALL is looking into it. There's nothing wrong with blocking access to these websites, because in my opinion you may shoot them onsite, and hang them by their balls who trades or deals child pornography. On the Internet, or in real life.
The question is; Is blocking content it a good idea? I have my doubts;
- Who decides if a website is really hosting child pornography. Most of these websites deal with it behind close doors. You have to get in to get access. Which organization is maintaining the list, AND who verifies the list. It won't be the first time that websites get banned for all the wrong reasons.
- What's next to be blocked? Websites about abortion? gay people? satanism?
Let's face it, more and more stuff is being controlled, and/or censored around the world. What will become of our freedom of speech, and privacy. Where will it end?
- Die-hard sicko's know about the dangers of searching for their 'fix'. These 'people' won't use the normal routes to get their stuff. Anonymous proxies (like the TOR network), and alternative networks like Freenet will become more popular.
B.t.w. If you're a customer of one of the ISP's, you have the opportunity to object/complain against blocking these websites. Don't think that that will happen a lot though :-) .
Today I ordered a new Dell 24inch TFT monitor for my main PC. I currently have a 19inch Sony (1280*1024), and the new 24inch widescreen monitor has a lot more desktop space, which comes in handy when you work with lots of open programs.
The main reason for buying was that Dell had a special discount till the end of Februari 2007 (nearly 300 euro's off). The secondary reason was that I wanted to treat myself for my upcoming birthday :-). This evening I was surfing the net, and ended up on the US website of Dell, and saw the prices there.....
just take a look at the pictures, and explain the difference to me (I know that you have to add sales tax in the US, but that's not what I'm pointing at).
US Dell Website
Dutch Dell website
A couple of weeks ago was the
HD-DVD protection officially circumvented. Now the Blu-Ray protection (which also uses AACS for protection) is a '
goner'.
I wonder how many trillions of dollars were spent on this protection (which is being paid by the consumers who buy these discs). I just hope that the movie industry follows the music record labels (EMI n this case) in
removing protection on audio CD's.
B.t.w. I saw the ripped HD-DVD movie '
Serenity' on my PC, and must say that the HD quality is phenomanal. Time to become an early-adaptor on the HD format (again :-)). This means a new
Full-HD TV, and an appropriate player.
OK, the title might sound a little weird, but trust me..... I work on a daily basis with digital certificates (end-user, and SSL certificates). These things get more, and more common these days. More and more webservices are being 'secured' by SSL certificates. The only problem is that the technicians who run the services don't know shit (well, most of them do) about SSL and/or PKI. I don't blame them, because it tends to be a little complex. SSL certificates can be generated as selfsigned certificates, or you might wanna get a commercial SSL certificate from Certificate Authorities like VeriSign, Thawte, GeoTrust, etc. Anyway, in every case, you need to generate a certificate signing request (CSR), and submit it to the Certificate Authority. The problem is that there are some applications that stay in a pending mode if you generate a CSR, and wait for the resulting certificate to come back from the CA. This might take a couple of days. It would be a lot nicer if you can request the certificate on another platform, and import it in the application when you get the thing. There are several ways to generate a CSR on the different platforms;
- OpenSSL - equivalent to rocket science for most people, since it's a commandline tool
- Via webserver tooling (IIS, JAVA Keytool, etc.)
- XCA - Not very user friendly if you're requesting just one or two certificates a year.
- And probably some other 'obscure' ways
But what if your application needs a SSL certificate, or your webserver is located on the other side of the world (and you have no way of accessing it directly)? How the hell do you generate a CSR? The Windows platform itself doesn't have any tools for creating certificates (only if you use IIS or have a CA running on the platform). I hope to solve this by creating an application (cross platform off course) which creates these CSR's, and create pkcs12 (or .pfx) files when you import the resulting certificate in the tool. This pkcs12 file can be installed on the server as needed. Finally, a challenge for me to start programming again.
Within the next couple of weeks, I need to pick a new lease car. It's probably gonna be the new
Honda Civic 1.8 Executive (black). I just hope that they have some sort of iPod integration for this car.
Anyone any info on that? It's got to be integrated or something, because the audio system is integrated into the dashboard, so it's not possible to place a 'stand-alone' car stereo in the car with iPod support (e.g. the
Alpine car hifi components :-P).
I'll probably need a new TV next year, and it's gonna be this
Philips 42PF9731D/10 TFT TV.
It features;
- 42 inch wide screen
- Full HD display (1080p)
- dual HDMI inputs
- Ethernet, and USB (for viewing movies or photos from your PC :) ).
- Support playback for mp4, mp3, DivX, XviD, etc.
- 2 tuners
- Multiple in- and outputs
Only drawback is the price (+3000 euros), so the New Years Eve lottery jackpot is more than welcome. If that hapends, I'll also throw in a
Xbox-360, and a
Nintendo Wii.
My current iPod (Photo, 20GB) started to give funny noises. If I gently shake it, I hear weird crackling noises from, what I think is, the internal drive. I had the same thing when we were in Tibet last year. That time the entire iPod refused to work permanently. Brought it back to the shop, and it got repaired (or so I was told). No the same thing is happening all over again :(
I just hope that the iPod will remain working for the next one or two months, because there might be a full screen video iPod early next year :P
So, anyone wanna buy a 20GB Photo iPod (it's little over a year old)?
Fiddling with my (Windows) mail server ended up in a 'serious' crash. The result was one week of mail down the drain :(. Even though I still had all my mail offline in my Mail.app, there was no way (at least not that I could find) to import it again in the IMAP folders.
I still have those mails in a backup of my Mac book Pro, so I could find the info with SpotLight.
If anyone has any ideas to import them back into the IMAP folders, please drop the ideas in the comments.
That was a Fridays night well spent :(
Do I really need a multipurpose phone/mp3 player/camera?
The talks about the upcoming iPhone from Apple made me think. Sure, a Apple iPhone would definitely be cool, but do I need a cell-phone/mp3 player. I already have a cell-phone (which has a radio, and mp3 player functionality), and I never used the radio, or the mp3 player.
Somehow I like to separate functionality. This way I can buy a new mp3 player (read: iPod) without having to buy a new phone. Or, if my phone dies, I can still listen to my music. Or, I can listen to music while having boring conversations on the phone.
So, this leaves the question; Would I buy an iPhone?.. Maybe, but only if it's innovating. Just a convergence of a phone and a mp3 player won't convince me.
Please note that I 'own' a cell-phone since 1998, and I just got my third in a 8 year timespan. During this period I also got a iMode enabled phone for free, but never used it. Mainly because the menu on the phone sucked big time. So, the iPhone needs to be very special (and available in Europe).
However, I'll definitely buy the rumored new full-(wide)screen iPod with touchscreen interface. Just for replacing my 'old' (and still working) iPod Photo.
REDELIJKHEID