A recent svn checkout on a Centos 5.5 x86_64 of ffmpeg refused to link. It complained:
libavcodec.so: undefined reference to `x264_encoder_open_104'
The fix was as simple as
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
before ./configure. In a weird way it makes even sense.
The Cisco / Linksys srw 2024 is not really a bad switch. What is really sad that the web interface will only work in IE7 or before. It will fail in any modern browser. There is nothing fancy about a web interface for a network switch. No need to use anything IE specific at all. No need to seemingly do it in a way that IE8 simply stops working. I think Cisco should either stop selling the device, update it, or at the very least put a note in the box that it requires IE7 or below to operate. If they would care that is.
Leo Laporte realized that he was communicating into /dev/null. It is not surprising that nobody noticed it.
In the pre Internet age dentists with a literary ambition not no corresponding talent could ‘publish’ the book themselves. They dropped a nice amount of cash on a couple of palette of dead trees. Now, in the digital age they just can blog, tweet, update their facebook page. The googlebot might care.
Social media always has been a Ponzi scheme. Much like you run out of fresh suckers in the money ‘making’ enterprises you run out of audience. The difference is that the internet is able to give you the illusion of an audience. It seem that things are working. Everybody in the world COULD find that tweet you just made that is so brilliant.
People and companies alike often fail to look clearly at the actual effort and time that they put into the creation of the content and put it into relation of the size of the actual audience. Luckily failed virals have the built in effect that nobody notices them. But they still exist, and so do millions of tweets that nobody cares about.
The signal to noise ratio of the overall Internet keeps collapsing. People complained about the “Summer of AOL” last century. It is a blessing that we had no idea what was coming our way …
wanting to check out a free application for the iPad I had to go through the following motion:
1) tapping in search of iTunes store makes it crash. No message whatsforever. Just vanishes.
2) wondering if that is related to the fact that there are pending updates, so doing those
3) iTunes Store still crashes tapping into search.
4) cold reboot fixes sudden store crash. Can locate the app.
5) trying to download I need to sign in. Fair enough.
6) trying to download, but something has changed with the CC. It has not, but hell if Apple thinks so.
7) trying to download, but NO I have to pick a a salutation
8) trying to download, but NO, the terms have changed and I have to agree to them.
9) trying to download a free app, and -imagine that- it does download. Less than 10 attempts! to get something simple going.
We bought some very nice pictures for our living room:
I really like the work of Siebe Warmoeskerken. It is nice these days that one can buy things directly from the artist. No need for a Gallery getting in the way.
Bill Joy wrote allot of software. Allot of what he wrote in the 70s is still in use. Of course not bit by bit. Not even much of his original source code might be left. But -whether you know it or not- BSD Unix, nfs and vi make your life better. Every day. Before his generation computer code was entered via punch cards. Access was very limited. Even on the terminals that Bill used people had to account for the time they used. But:
So the computers of the time at Michigan, you were charged like $3 an hour. It was
interactive, which was cool. It wasn’t just punch cards, but you were charged like $3 an
hour to be on, and you were charged for CPU time, disk IO’s. Every little thing the
computer did, it would keep counts and charge you. So the Anthropology Department
had an account with several thousand dollars so we could get some reasonable computer
time. And we figured out how to get free time very quickly. There was a bug in the
system where you could tell it when you logged in, you’d say you wanted time, and time
equals seven seconds, or time equals five minutes, some limit. You’d sign up for a block
of time. You’d say T equals K, which was not a number, but that would give you free
time, and then we had as much time as we wanted until they plugged that loophole, which
took several years.
from Andreas Bechtolsheim & William Joy, 1999
I am sure that they would have found a different way to get the time they needed. Sometimes
gaming the system is a good thing. But certainly not as often as people think. The spirit of Enron is still out there.
Stephen Pigeon posted an interesting blog entry about the history of knowledge in math. The Internet CAN be a nice and inspiring place.
In order to operate the ZTE K3565-Z under OS X 10.5 or 10.6 you need to set the
network preference settings yourself. The Software defaults are wrong and will not work.
Vodafone phone support refers to debitel for this product. Debitel charges $1.55 a minute for support.
The bigger problem is that they don’t support OS X. They just say that they don’t know anything about it.
In the end things got working with these settings collected from the Internet and applied with a bit of luck:
When you insert the USB stick you get a volume with
Vodafone MC Installer
I ran this. I think it is needed. Also since its distinct crappyness will give you a taste of things to come. After you installed this the volume will no longer be mounted when the stick is being inserted.
Under 10.6 I got lots of messages about extensions not being working / being compatible. Both after the install and after the reboot this POS installer felt it needed.
Vodafone Mobile Connect.
should launch after the install. It fails the first time under OS X 10.6, complaining that it can not find a the stick. Just start it again.
The Vodafone Mobile Connect junk-app is good for one thing only: it lets you enter the PIN of the stick. The “Activate” / “Aktivieren” button is actually plain evil:
it will overwrite the network preference settings for the K3565-Z with non working defaults. Don’t click it.
Since we are talking crapware here the Network control panels gets populated with three devices for the ZTE stick. You can ignore / remove the ones ending in ATPort and DiagPort.
One should read “Vodafo…565-Z”. The number is *99***1#. That’s ok.
In order to make the ‘Connect’ / ‘Verbinden’ button sing for you have to change settings under ‘Advanced …’ / ‘Weitere Optionen …’.
In the Modem tab choose for the
‘vendor’ / ‘Hersteller’ the setting ‘Generic’ / ‘Allgemein’
then for the
model pick “GPRS (GSM/3) ”
for the
APN: event.vodafone.de
just like your Grandma always told you. Make sure to hit “Apply” / “Aendern” before you try to connect. If you “activate” the card with the mobile connect crapware then your settings will be overwritten.
While many in the US might think that getting a new car is mostly a matter of picking the right brand and dealership, in the end the darn things still have to be produced. Somewhere. And that part is actually quiet complex.
Nissan had to halt three of its plants since one chip was not available. Manufacturing in 2010 is a highly complex and interlocked environment.