Spoof videos on you tube? News? Well no, but I can’t resist this one You know us programmers get all excited about recursion… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw8gE3lnpLQ

 I’ve just received a new company shirt in the post. It’s good to know that as a home worker I’m not forgotten and that the company values me and shows its appreciation with freebies. It’s not the shirt that is important as the message it sends.

However,  what message do I get from the fact that it is 100% polyester? Maybe they want me to destroy my hardware with huge charges of static. Perhaps I’m supposed to creep up on competitors and destroy their kit - but why would I do that in a shirt emblazoned with our logo?

Maybe it just means that that they don’t value me much.  Unless polyester is hip? Or more believably my company is about 40 years behind the times and have just discovered the new drip dry wonder material…

A friend (no really) has a couple of PC’s they want to pass on but the friend is an accountant (see it is a friend & not me) and they want to make sure the disks are sanitised of any confidential data before they let them go. I had a google and came up with eraser at http://www.heidi.ie/node/6 . Is it safe idea to use freeware for your security?

 I’d go for the “boot nuke disk” but I guess that leaves no OS for the next user. Still that resolves any licence issues too. Any other suggestions as to what to use and how?

I’m sure I’ve said before that if you make safety / security procedures too complex people will just bypass them and leave you worse off than before. Another example has just arisen from good old Tesco. To get into my account they want the 1st 3rd  & 4th digit of my pin & the 2nd 5th and 8th letter of my password. Typing all of it would be easier, missing 1 digit out of my pin isn’t going save my account from hackers is it? As for my password I end up either writing it down & counting which letter is where or reciting it down my fingers (usually out loud or at least with moving lips!). Either way it would be more secure if I just typed the damn thing in. My other gripe with Tesco security is they only accept 8 character passwords. Well I say accept, you can type 12 characters on the register page but they trim it to 8 and if you enter more than 8 on the login they reject it.

All in all longer passwords and none of the 1st 3rd & 8th would make life easier AND more secure.

I’m using quite an old Music Match Juke Box (v7.5) as my CD ripper. The newer one screws up some other apps and is just bigger & bloatier & I have registered this version (I don’t just use freeware, on occasion I will pay for stuff!).

I use my own player “what I wrote” as an MP3 player as MM tends to hog resources, displays the tag name when I want the file name and doesn’t do some of the shuffle effects I want (like play next sequential track when in shuffle mode). Also it saves play lists as text files so it’s easy to manipulate them & doesn’t create weird libraries I never use. Anyway writing your own apps is cool & a CD / MP3 player is so easy with Visual Basic why not?

 However, back to MMJB. The problem I have is that it doesn’t tend to find newer CD & I end up typing in track names (well not typing, cutting & pasting from Amazon CD listings usually). Is there a new CDDB? Can I get MM to look it at it? Has someone declared copyright on track listings so they can’t be accessed?

As a man with more books than is good for him (or the house) I do list books I no longer want on Amazon as a seller. Not all of them as some (most) aren’t worth anything - a lot of books are listed at 1p and the seller makes a bit on the postage. By the time amazon have had their cut that’s a quite small bit.

Selling on ebay makes more as their cut is less BUT with amazon you don’t need to mess around with photos & flashy listings. Just a basic entry under the ISBN and aim to be cheaper (or more collectible) than anyone else. The real benefit of Amzon over ebay is that it doesn’t cost to list & the listing stays active for 60(?) days and after that you can re-list if you want so it is all round less work. If/When a book sells they send you an email.

Just like round here, Amazon have re-vamped their site. One of the irritating things is they no longer include the buyers address in the email they send so you have to log on to get it. I suppose this is better from a security point of view, the less information in clear text mails the better. Not sure if this is why they have done it but maybe it does make sense.

http://whsmithemagazines.presse-wl.com/Publications/Default.aspx

Will let you download magazines rather than waste all that convienient paper. There is a free trial too so you can get a FREE magazine. Well sort of, so far I have wasted an hour installing viewer software that won’t run and so money spent none (good), time spent an hour (bad) magazines read none (v. bad).