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Upgrading Mono – whoops!

I wanted to upgrade the to the latest Banshee music player something fierce. I’ve been meaning to blog about Banshee for forever and a day, but with the latest tarball out, that includes plugin support, especially Audioscrobbler, I tried to upgrade.

Well, Banshee wants the latest and greatest Mono. I checked the Ubuntu Backports, but they didn’t have the latest Banshee nor Mono.

So I tried something that worked when I was running Ubuntu 5.04 and wanted the latest VLC to stream 89.3 The Current – I changed my sources.list to the latest Ubuntu (Dapper Drake), upgraded the Mono and Banshee packages, and then downgraded my sources.list back to Ubuntu 5.10.

Mono seems to be working fine, and the Mono apps I have loaded (Tomboy, F-Spot) with one exception – Banshee. Banshee segfaults if you just look at it funny. I can’t listen to music, import my library, or restart it after a crash.

Ah well, back to XMMS for listening to music.

One Nokia 770, please

I’d like a Nokia 770 please.

The era of handheld, internet browsing tablets is finally here. With an impressive 800×440 resolution, running a customized version of GNOME, this would be perfect for me. I currently keep a laptop in the living room, but rarely use it – and when I do, it’s to browse the net while watching TV, and that’s about it. This is truly what I need. Well, not need, but want. A lot.

Here’s a fairly decent review of the 770, by a former editor at OSNews.com.

Playoff thoughts

I’m not sure why, but I was happy to see the Steelers win this afternoon.

The Colts have a coach who is well respected, with a rep he can’t win the big one, but who is supposed to be one of the nicest coaches you’ll ever meet. They have one of the best, if not the best, quarterback in the league. And yet I was rooting against them.

There’s something about Bill Cowher that makes me cheer for the man. He’s a pull no punches, tell like it is coach. I like the trick plays. I like the blue collar feel to the Steelers. I like that Cowher just wins – and his tenure in the league is as impressive as anything.

Jerome Bettis is pure class as he has accepted his role, and Big Ben, while tip-toeing the line of cockiness, is a hell of a leader on the feel. Troy Palamalu just makes plays – and he was robbed today.

Robbed! I don’t know what it was, but I thought the refs in both of today’s games were just off. From the non-call false start / off-sides in the Colt / Steelers game to the overturn of Palamalu’s interception, there were even a couple calls in the Bears / Panthers games that just seemed wrong.

Poor refs can’t ever catch a break.

I was sad to see the Patriots lose, but happy to see the Bears and Redskins lose. (Yes, I’m more happy for teams to lose than teams to win). The Bears is an easy call – I’m a Packer fan, and the true rivalry is with the team in Chicago. For the Seahawks – meh. I’m happy for them as it’s been 21 years since their last playoff win, and I respect Coach Holmgren – even if he is coaching the wrong team.

Next week’s picks: Steelers and Panthers win, and meet in Super Bowl XL.

GoDaddy Follow-up

Let’s just say that I received such a form letter in response to my email, that I won’t even post it. Basically they implied it was a problem with my webhost since I don’t host with GoDaddy. It led me to firing back this, short and sweet:

Your stock answer below does not answer either of my questions.

Let me be clear as to what my questions are:

  1. Why did GoDaddy park my domain for a period of 6-12 hours on 1/9/2006?

  2. Why did GoDaddy’s account management system on godaddy.com show me my

domain expired on 1/4/2006 when I had renewed on 12/8/2005.

Those two errors above cost me another 2 year domain renewal fee as I

believed my domain had expired when it had not. Having my domain hosted by

another webhosting company has nothing to do with your account management

system or you parking my domain and showing a GoDaddy page when I visited

paulcutler.org.

Paul Cutler

Now they need to verify it’s me speaking to them, and the cycle continues.

Google DRM

The Register asks the questions about Google’s new DRM that need to be asked.

Just because it’s Google, doesn’t mean they deserve a free pass. DRM is DRM. And now we have multiple, confusing, versions of DRM to muck up our content.

As the article says, so much for your motto, Do No Evil, Google.

If you still need to get up to speed on why DRM just plain won’t work, Read Cory Doctorow’s June 2004 speech on DRM to Microsoft or in pretty html here.

GoDaddy Screws up

I have multiple websites through Dotster and GoDaddy, and typically register with whomever is cheapest, and then jump to a different registrar at renewal time to again keep costs down. I’ve been happy with GoDaddy’s renewal fees, as the registrars usually try to charge you double to renew vs. registering a domain, and GoDaddy usually charges the same price.

However, with paulcutler.org up for renewal, they’ve screwed the pooch pretty bad on this one. A copy of my (fairly nice) email is below, we’ll wait for their response. According to their support website their phone hold time is 17 minutes, and average email response time is 9 hours. As it’s not mission critical as the site is up now, we’ll see how their email response is.

Here’s my email / letter:

Dear GoDaddy Customer Service Representative:

I wanted to make you aware of a problem I had with your service. I visited my domain early this morning (7 a.m. CST) and I received a GoDaddy Parked Domain page. Logging in to my account at GoDaddy, it showed my domain expiring on 1-4-2006.

Unfortunately, my office network blocks webmail, so I was unable to visit Gmail to double check my last email from GoDaddy. I then assume assumed the domain had expired as the GoDaddy account page showed, and GoDaddy had given me a week before parking the domain, as it had worked last night. I then renewed the domain for another 2 years through GoDaddy early this morning.

Upon returning home tonight from work, my domain was working again, and I checked my GoDaddy account and Gmail. Sure enough, I have a receipt from GoDaddy in Gmail showing I renewed this domain on 12-8-2005 for 2 years, and my GoDaddy account now showed my domain was now renewed through 2010.

Please explain to me why my domain was parked when I renewed over a month ago. I feel taken now that I’ve renewed for an additional 2 years on top of my renewal in December and you have even more of my money. I’m extremely disappointed in your level of service, specifically in not displaying my account information correctly.

Sincerely,

Paul Cutler

(email deleted to avoid more spam)

Wisconsin Gets It

Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin signed into law a bill requiring any vendor who provides electronic voting machines must provide the code that runs on those machines.

This, combined with paper copies of the vote you cast for (which Wisconsin also requires) are a must when it comes to electronic voting. Not just to avoid the fraud as seen in Ohio in 2004, or as a check against corrupt CEOs who publicly say they’ll do everything in their power to see an election go a certain way and they also just happen to provide e-voting machines, but the code and paper voting provide trust to the end user that their vote counts.

Learn more about e-voting courtesy of the EFF.