Terminally Incoherent

I really think that our NJ Assemblyman Peter J. Biondi got flamed on some messageboard recently. I’m saying this because he apparently introduced a bill that would institute mandatory online identification.

Yup, this guy wants to abolish online anonymity. It is very obvious that he does not understand the internet. If I had a penny for every jackass who wants to legislate the internet, I would probably be invited to join the Skull and Bones club by now

I wonder if Mr. Biondi knows that Internet != USA NJ. I wonder how he plans to enforce this bill on message boards hosted outside the US state? Does he realize that this bill will close down free blogging services, severely impact online social networks and force hundreds of American most NJ interner companies out of business to move out of state.

How would you enforce this for email? For java or AJAX based chat clients? For IRC? If google implements an identity check for Blogger, it will likely loose 80% of it’s user base. There is no way anyone in their right mind would even consider complying with this. The only people who will benefit from this are… Canadians. Because if such a bill would pass, there would be a mass exodus away from US based hosting to Canadian based

If this bill passes, then we are not better than China…The only thing this bill can achieve is to create a gigantic traffic jam on interstate highways, as people move the servers to more internet friendly states.

We please send some letters to this dude and tell him that he just ruined his political career? I would never vote for someone who actively tries to break the internet.

Update Tue Mar 7 09:49:43 EST 2006

Um… I updated the post slighly, because zewrestler mentioned this bill will only apply to NJ – not the whole country. I appologize for spazzing out.

One of the students approached me yesterday after class, and asked me to take a look at his laptop. He had some major issues with it and wanted some advice. I find it funny how people always assume that if you are computer scientist, you must also be a “computer guy” and a tech support wizard. In my case this assumption is true, but I know allot of people that were brilliant programmers but could not take care of their computer if their life depended on it. Hell, I don’t consider myself a “hardware guy” either. Whenever I need to buy a part I just call Marinos and ask him what is good out there and where can I get the best price. But that’s a topic for a whole other rant.

First thing I wanted to do when the student approached me is to suggest contacting helpdesk. I really don’t have time to fix computers for my students – and I’m not getting paid to do it. However, I’m always willing to take a look and give advice if they need it.

I was shocked to find out that OIT Helpdesk turned him down saying that there was nothing they could do… So I decided I check out the machine. The laptop had a classic BSOD on boot-up issue. When your computer consistently BSOD’s while booting, even in safe mode, you probably have probably a corrupted registry hive.

Windows registry is funky, and when it gets trashed it usually takes down the whole system. You can of course try to copy some system files from the installation CD hoping that you will restore it to a usable state. But I have never, ever seen that working. Essentially the best course of action in this type of problems is, recover data and reinstall the OS.

Is this stuff out of scope for helpdesk? I really don’t know. I sent them an email describing the issue and asking for advice. Let’s see if they respond.

It’s not like this is a complicated process. All they need to do is to grab a 2.5″ enclosure and extract the students’ data. Either that or use Knoppix to burn his stuff to CD’s/DVD’s. Or walk him through a parallel install of windows… This is really not rocket science. Especially that last step seems to be reasonable.

All this poor guy wants is to get his iTunes music,and his homeworks out of there Of course there might be an issue with the DRM and transferring songs between computers… But once again – this is a topic for a whole new rant.

Isn’t this the type of stuff we have the helpdesk for though? Helping students to fix their machines when they break, and help them recover homeworks when the machines die? Maybe I’m wrong here…

Ill update this post when I get a response form the helpdesk… Let’s see if I end up being quoted at Giant Robots for this one

Update Fri Mar 3 13:57:26 EST 2006

Yes, this seems to be out of scope for the helpdesk. Korun who works for OIT says that they are only supporting faculty, and only with computers that are MSU property.

If you ask me, this kinda sucks… We should really have some tech support for students on campus. I saw people doing the “Virus Clinic” thing in SC several times… I think we should have something like that running all the time somewhere extend the services they offer to stuff like data recovery, and OS reinstallation assistance.

Update Fri Mar 3 15:21:29 EST 2006

Here is the official response from the helpdesk:

Thank you for contacting the Technology Solutions Center about your student’s computer problem. At this time, the TSC cannot assist this student further. The Technology Solutions Center can only provide limited technical support to students on the following three issues:

1-Virus Removal
2-Spyware Removal
3-Campus Network connectivity

It is suggested that the student contact their computer manufacturer for further support. Again thank you for contacting the TSC.

So there you have it… Case closed I suspect that there is a reason why they only offer such limited support. Maye they don’t want to be liable for loosing student data, voiding their warranties, or breaching wierd manufacturer EULAS. Eh…

Update Tue Mar 7 09:53:09 EST 2006

I talked to the student yesterday. I’m happy to report that a Knoppix CD that I gave him allowed his more computer literate firend to save all his data to an external drive. Then they reformated, and as of yesterday he is back in business.

I’m telling you – knoppix saves lives! Always have a Knoppix CD’s on you!

Logitech Digital Pen

I keep looking for a good way to take notes in school. I like to have digital copies of my stuff, because they are easy to backup, transfer and share. Paper based notes are by far the most efficient note-taking method, but they have a big downside. They need to be scanned in at some point – otherwise they are just clunky, physical objects. Scanning notes is tedious, and resulting documents tend to be large and not very printer friendly.

Taking notes on my laptop is not very convenient either. I still haven’t found anything on linux that could even approach to match the flexibility of OneNote. But there is no way I’m booting windoze just to use that app.

Besides, drawing with a mouse is a pain… And I’m not planning to get a tabletop anytime soon. These things are nice for note taking, but kinda clunky for almost everything else. And the Linux support for these things is nearly non-existent, so they are useless to me.

Recently I began noticing these digital pens popping up on the market. Probably the most notable example is the Logitech IO₂. This thing is a regular pen, with a built in motion sensor that tracks the movements of the pen on paper, are records them. Sounds great, but I’m wondering how good is it in practice. Drop me a comment if you had any experience with one of these things. How good are they at actually capturing the handwriting?

I’m not planning to buy the Logitech product. I just picked it because it comes up in the top 5 in a google search for digital pens. But it just to damn expensive for me. I am not willing to shell out $200 on a pen, that I may never use because it’s tracking or storage capacity sucks. Or because it does not work with linux…

The system requirements blurb on the Logitech store page only seems to acknowledge windows. This probably means that unless I hack it myself, I will not be able to use it in a non-windows system. To get it working you need to install proprietary drivers, and support software. The target consumers here are obviously only windows users. In other words, this product is completely useless to me.

What I really need, is a pen just like that – but with a built in solid state memory stick. I want to be able to plug this pen directly into a USB port and find my documents neatly saved as files in an open format (preferably eps or svg, pdf or something related). Just give me raw data in some kind of standardized format, and I’ll convert it to whatever I need it to be.

The pen should be able to take in standard, off-the shelf ink replacements (pick a popular size carried by Bic or someone else and stick with it). It should not require me to install any software, but you can provide some premium conversion app for lazy windows users.

The pen can take a small battery, or charge from the USB port. Battery would make it heavier, but also more reliable. You can always replace a battery in a middle of a lecture, without missing to much notes. You can’t do that with a USB charged gadget though. So I would be willing to trade the extra weight in for added reliability.

So, is there anything like that out there on the market? And if not, how hard would it be to make one? People would buy this stuff, if the price was right!

Who is going to make my pen?