Category Archives: Software

The Stupidity of Multi-Part "Articles"

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Authors of online content seem to just love multi-part articles. Usually they’re guides or reviews, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a big site or a no-name blog: authors just love to leave you hanging. It’s not good “visitor retainment practice” — it’s just annoying and pretentious. It leaves readers with half a thought (which can be far more dangerous than none), and it leaves the author looking like a stupid kind of guy.

It’s one thing when you say “Part 1 of the Mega Vista Review” – you can succinctly sum up an entire section or sections of the topic, completely contained within its own article. But it’s quite another thing when you say “How to play solitaire: Part one, shuffling the deck.” But that’s what most sites seem to love to do, and it’s just plain wrong, on many levels. Most importantly of all, not only does the reader no benefit, but the authors also do themselves no good: that reader isn’t going to come back a month from now to read part 2!

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Auto-Generated DVD Info in Windows Media Center

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Anyone that uses Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center to watch DVDs on his/her PC knows how boring and repetitive it can be to continuously have to use the “Search for DVD Info” feature to get WMP/WMC to download the name of the DVD, the name & length of each chapter, and the DVD Cover. It seems that Windows Media Center has a workaround for this that can make it automatically download that information for you.

There are two key ingredients in order to get this to work: First you need to patch your registry to automate the process, and then you need to get a XML file that ties the DVD’s hash to a key that can be used to retrieve the correct info.

The steps to accomplish the first part are highlighted on The Green Button, and are fairly straight-forward. Those directions also provide the steps you need to create each of the “identification files” for WMC. However, a better way exists.

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"Padding-" and "Margin-" – What’s the Difference?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Many intermediate and begginer CSS designers get confused when it comes to padding and margin values. What’s the difference? They both just shift stuff, so why the different names? Don’t they do the same thing?

Although the behavior of margin- and padding- is very similary, there is one important difference: margin- is on the outside of the element, and padding- is on the inside. What this means is, one will apply the whitespace shift “after” the element begins (padding), and the other will apply the whitespace “before” the element begins (margin). Many times there is no visible difference, but sometimes there is – a big one.

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US Military Unveils Working Heat-Ray Gun

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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The heat-ray gun previously discussed on Slashdot back when it was first certified for use by the US Military in Iraq against civilians and rebels has been officially unveiled. The “millimeter wave” technology it uses causes the skin and body tissue to react in a way similar to that of being exposed to extreme heat – without the temperature. It’s being released as a “highly effective nonlethal crowd-control system;” whatever that means.

The “heat ray” is mounted on a Humvee or other vehicle, and has a range of up to 500 meters – which is 1,650 feet or one-third of a mile – that’s a long way.

The only problem is, this “non-weapon” hasn’t been tested by anyone other than the military. Needless to say, it’s not FDA-approved, nor is it likely to give it’s creators the Noble Peace Prize. The military claims its safe, and only the military will ever be in a position to find out – at least so long as it’s deployed in Iraq and the Middle East, and not back at home.

How long before this becomes standard riot-squad gear? How long until it can be inconspicuously mounted mounted on the back of that Ford Explorer used by the local police department? And the biggest question of all: how long until we find out what this really does to the human body, and just how many previously-unknown ailments it can produce. After all, all that energy has to go somewhere, and if it’s not a visible burn (according to the military, that is), where does the damage appear?

With these kinds of “tools,” the damage is usually long-term. Who knows, in 10 years from now everyone ever shot at with this thing could experience some severe form of cancer or even something worse and never-before-seen – but the Military isn’t waiting. Just like a child on Christmas, they have their new toy, and they’re not waiting to read the instruction manual, they just want to have fun!

Wikipedia Takes our Money & Links, Gives Nothing Back

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Wikipedia has just completed it’s annual Fundraising Drive – a million dollars in pure cash have found their way to the Wikimedia foundation. Wikipedia used to be cool, and donating to a non-profit organization like Wikipedia was definitely one of the most altruistic and philanthropic deeds one could do. But in the past, Wikipedia used to take money from the community, and use it for hosting and other expenses. But now Wikipedia takes something else too, and this time, it doesn’t give back to the community. Wikipedia wants you to link to it, but it’s now officially unwilling to “link” back to you.

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“Technorati is borked right now!”

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

There’s something thrilling about seeing a big server down on its knees. It probably has something to do with the complexity of an IT Managers job: no matter how many redundancy tiers you have and how hard you work to keep it up, something is going to go wrong, sometime. Along side famous error messages like those of Digg and Flickr, Technorati’s fits right in:

Why I Joined Habari, and What It’s All About

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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People have been bombarding my email asking me questions about Habari, and most importantly, why I joined it. I wasn’t planning on blogging about any of this until I officially became a committer in the Habari project, but after reading this post, I feel the need to share my reasons.

I’ve been a loyal contributor the WordPress project and a ardent (for lack of a more aggressive word) WP-Hacker for what seems like forever – even though it isn’t. WordPress is my first-love when it comes to blogging, you may have noticed. But yeah, I working on Habari too.

I didn’t leave WordPress. Not because Matt is the devil-incarnate nor because I’m put off that he wouldn’t hire me (not even interested), but because Habari is a challenge. It’s something I’ve always wanted to work on.

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A Country without Internet for a Week or So…

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Imagine having no internet for a day. It can’t be that difficult, can it? You can find things to do, offline work to get finished, people to talk to, books to read, TV shows to watch, etc. Now try to imagine a business without internet – obviously one that makes of the internet normally. Again, they might be behind on the day’s news, miss out on a couple of stock changes, and lose touch with some contacts and/or offices – but they’ll live through it. But what if it wasn’t just one person or business, and not even two, but an entire country without internet for a week! What would happen!?

Today, we were unlucky enough to find out. Actually, it turns out we were the “lucky” ones, at least according to the Jordan Telecom customer service manager we spoke to. In a nutshell, we’ve been having internet problems for the last week or so, and we didn’t have internet at all for most of today. The conversation went something along these lines:

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WordPress 2.0.7 Fixes the FeedBurner Bug

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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For the first (and hopefully last) time ever, we’re glad to hear that WordPress has a major security vulnerability. Why? As a result of a security vulnerability that affects WordPress 2.0.6 and below on certain server configurations, the WordPress Developers Team has released a new version of WordPress that incorporates both a security patch for the detailed vulnerability, and a fix for the FeedBurner Bug that we reported for 2.0.6. You can download WordPress 2.0.7 or see the list of affected/changed files here on the WP Development Blog.

Originally, the WordPress team had refused to patch the WordPress 2.0.6 FeedBurner Bug on the premise that it was too soon to release another version of WordPress for a “minor” bug – which we disagreed with. However, you can now download WordPress 2.0.7 and hopefully this time there aren’t any surprise bugs that need immediate patching. We highly recommend everyone goes and downloads WordPress 2.0.7 immediately in order to avoid anyone compromising their blog/site via the security hole in WordPress 2.0.6.

Correction: WordPress is released and maintained independant from Automattic

Windows Forces you to use UAC to Add a Printer

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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If you want to use Windows Vista and you want to be able to print to a network printer, you’re going to have to use UAC. You turned it off? Turn it back on. You’re using the in-built “Administrator” account? Log-out and log-in as a normal admin. Microsoft says you have to use UAC to get a printer installed. If you don’t, you get this ugly message:

“Windows cannot connect to the printer. The specified print monitor is unknown.”

Exactly why this message shows up isn’t clear, it has nothing to do with the printer you choose to use or the process you take. This particular message is displayed when trying to add a printer via the wizard:

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