It would be disingenuous of me to say I hate lawyers; I'm married to one after all. But shit like this, involving a class-action suit against Creative Labs over the advertised capacity of their MP3 players, convinces me that some lawyers deserve to be shot in the face:

According to the settlement agreement, the lead plaintiffs, who filed their federal lawsuit in California, alleged that Creative had misled consumers by exaggerating the capacity of its MP3 players. The fraud allegation hinged mainly on two different definitions of gigabyte. According to the decimal definition (the only one I knew until today), a gigabyte is 1 billion (10⁹) bytes. According to the binary definition, a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 (2³⁰) bytes. While Creative used the decimal definition in its advertising, the settlement says, "certain computer operating systems report hard drive capacity using a binary definition." On those systems, a 20GB Creative Zen player would register as only 18.6GB or so, about 7 percent less than advertised.

Now it's true that hard drives use the decimal definition for a gigabyte when advertising their capacities. However, it's not "certain computer operating systems" that report hard drive capacity using the binary definition; it's all computer operating systems. Computer data is stored in binary format, so it can't report capacity in gigabytes using any other definition.

The rank stupidity of all this is that, whether you divide a hard drive's capacity by 1,000,000,000 or 1,037,741,824, it's still the same number of bytes. Only the divisor has changed. So Creative didn't exaggerate the capacity of their players at all; they simply failed to account for the fact that computers use the binary definition of a gigabyte. 20GB decimal = ~18.6GB binary. There's nothing misleading about this, except to consumers who are ignorant of how computers and data storage work. And I don't think Creative has an obligation to educate them; it just has to be truthful.

But in the hands of skilled trial lawyers, this inconsequential difference can be represented to a judge (who quite likely is also technologically ignorant) as a case of deceptive advertising, even fraud, and instead of wasting enormous time and money on defending themselves from this nonsense, Creative opted for a settlement. So if you own a Zen or other Creative MP3 player, you're entitled to buy a 1GB MP3 player at half-price, or 20% off any item ordered from Creative's online store.

For striking this courageous blow for consumers, the lawyers pocket $900,000. If it makes you feel better, in binary that would only be $878.9K.

Update: As ilcylic demonstrates in a comment below, an OS (Linux in this case) can report hard drive capacity in decimal format if it so chooses.  But given that volatile memory storage will always be reported in binary, I'm not sure that resolves the confusion issue.

The adventures of a company called Psystar, which is offering Mac clones computers with Mac OS X preinstalled for $399, continue to heat up the tech blogs.  Gizmodo is mostly convinced they're a scam:

Not only does the Miami Chamber of Commerce and BBB not know anything about any company named Psystar (confirmed by reader Travis through his contacts in the chamber), the actual physical address they listed on their website actually changed halfway through the day yesterday.

And it continued to change throughout the week.  Then on Wednesday, the Psystar store was knocked offline when they lost their payment processor, who said that Psystar had violated their merchant account agreement for, among other things, failing to use address verification during the order process.  They're using PayPal for now.

As of Saturday, Psystar is supposedly shipping orders; as CNET's Tom Krazit reported, his credit card has been charged but he hasn't received a shipping confirmation yet.  It would amaze me at this point that Psystar would attempt to scam customers (if that was their intent) with the spotlight turned on them, but I'm also skeptical they can continue to ship computers that obviously violate Apple's licensing agreements, even if they changed the name of the computer from OpenMac to "Open Computer".

This is my first post using Microsoft's new Windows Live Writer.  It's a publishing tool designed to work with multiple blogging services.  You give it the URL, your username and password, and it configures itself for that blog.  You can do all the usual bloggy things you do with other editors: preview entries using the blogs's templates, CSS and so on; upload content; compose offline; etc.

So far I like it except for a couple of things: holding down cursor keys or Backspace (as you might for selecting or deleting text) is a pain in the ass because the program holds the keypresses in a buffer and doesn't execute them until you release the key.  So I can't tell what I'm selecting or deleting.  This has to be the easiest bug in the world to fix.  I could do it if I had access to the source code.

The second annoying problem is tags.  So far all I see is an option for inserting a block of text containing tags linked to a specific service.  That's not what I want; I want to be able to enter my tags so that they're linked to other entries in the blog.  But I don't see any way to simply enter tags that get uploaded along with the entry.

But I've tried it with both my LJ and my other blog, and it seems to work without drama.  Its formatting is different from when I use Semagic's HTML mode (or when I use LJ's editor), but it handles blockquoting better than I do by hand.  And I like having one tool from which I can post to both blogs; Semagic performs better, but it only works with LJ-based blogs.

Anybody else having trouble with Firefox lately?

It seemed to start after the 2.0.0.12 update, but I can't be sure it was directly related to that; it could be in combination with some other update to Windows or another program.  But it crashes.  A lot.

It seems to happen randomly, but I notice it most frequently when scrolling through a Web page (Yahoo! seems especially vulnerable) and then switching to another application, either by clicking on that application's window or using Alt+Tab.  I'll get the dreaded "firefox.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close" dialog box.  And every once in a while it quits with absolutely no warning.

I've tried following the hints on the Firefox crash page on Mozilla's support site.  I've completely uninstalled Firefox, deleted its program folder, deleted my profile folders, and reinstalled using a clean copy downloaded directly from Mozilla (v2.0.0.13 now).  I've tried disabling extensions.  One thing which did seem to help was running in Windows 2000 compatibility mode, but the problem didn't go away completely.  And why would I need to do that now when it was never needed before?

I'm now running it again with the Google toolbar uninstalled (which was the only add-on I've installed since reinstalling Firefox) to see if that helps.  But so far I am at a complete loss as to why it's breaking on my computer after running trouble-free for, well, years.

Any other ideas?

Geek nostalgia of the day:

10 Worst PC Keyboards of All Time

There are some doozies on this list, but most discouraging is that Commodore made the list three times.  And I'm not even sure the C64 belongs here.  True, it did not have a well-designed keyboard, but it was certainly usable by a touch-typist, which can't be said for any other entrant on the list.  The C64's biggest problem was a lack of localization: it followed the European norms at the time for symbol placement, which forced me into hunt-and-peck mode while learning the layout (the double-quote was a shifted 2, for example, and the = key was right next to the Return key, which might have made a weird kind of sense when programming but was really annoying when trying to write a paper).  Of course, when I got an IBM-based PC later, I had to re-learn the standard U. S. keyboard layout.

But some of the other keyboards on this list are beyond dreadful.  My favorites are the Mattel Aquarius, which had the awesome feature of placing a Reset button right next to the 1 key; and the all-time bad-keyboard champ, the IBM PCjr.  The only advantage of its wireless keyboard was that you could throw it across the room without damaging any wires.

Glad to see that the House of Lords is focusing on the most pressing issues facing its nation: the thickness of sandwich bread.  Vector: Hit & Run.

Marc Andreessen checks in on new developments in artificial intelligence, including Microsoft's erstwhile "Santa-bot":

The idea was that you would add "northpole@live.com" to your kid's MSN Messenger and your kid could talk to Santa Clause online. Sounds like fun.

Thanks to The Register, let's roll the chat room transcript:

User says: Pizza

Santa says: Yum! What do you want for Christmas, User?

User says: Maybe you shouldn't eat so much! You are quite large!

Santa says: My elves will get right on that. And what else are you wishing for this year, User?

User says: Maybe you shouldn't eat it?

Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!

User says: Eat it

Santa says: No thank you. I don't eat things!

User says: Eat it

Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!

User says: Eat it

Santa says: You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else...

I think I need to go take a shower.

Western Digital succumbs to DRM hysteria:

Western Digital's 1TB MyBook external hard drives won't share media files over network connections (UPDATE: Don't install the "required" client software! See workaround below). From the product page:

"Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access."

It doesn't matter what the files are: If you try to share these formats over a network, Western Digital assumes not just that you're a criminal, but that it is its job to police users. You see, MP3, DivX, AVI, WMV and Quicktime files are copy-protected formats.

Awesome product planning: alienate your customers, but you'll look good to the media companies who aren't actually the target for your products.  Way to hit one out of the park, WD.  (Courtesy Coyote Blog.)

Best World Record That No One Should Actually Try To Break:

Six years ago, paramedic Matthew McKnight was working an accident on a road near Pittsburgh. What happened next is one for the record books. McKnight was hit by a car doing 70 mph and was thrown a record-setting 118 feet.

At the hospital, yes, he lived, he was diagnosed with two dislocated shoulders, one of which was also broken, and a broken pelvis, leg and tailbone. McKnight spent two weeks in the hospital and 80 days in rehab. His ER doctor was so impressed by McKnight's impromptu flight, he submitted it to Guinness World Records.

The record took a while to verify, but will be in the upcoming 2008 edition of the book.

OTOH, video evidence for that would be epic.

Last blogger sent to Gitmo (link courtesy msginnyo), please turn out the lights.  I'd probably get waterboarded for my last five entries alone.  Granted, this only establishes a committee to explore methods by which "violent radicalization" may be identified and flushed out, so the only real cost of this bill might be another waste of your tax dollars.  But committees have annoying habits of making, you know, recommendations . . . which ultimately become law.

World's Hardest Easy Geometry Problem (via Coyote Blog).  Easy because it can be solved using elementary geometry.  Hard because it's . . . well, hard.  I haven't attempted it myself; maybe you have an hour or five to spend on this.

A massive five megabytes of hard disk storage, courtesy of IBM in 1956.  Although it wasn't quite megabytes (as data was stored as 7-bit and not 8-bit characters), and it wasn't exactly portable (the cabinet measured 5' x 6' and weighed more than a ton).  So quit yer bitchin' about your dinky 20GB iPod, k?

Damn.  I was positively giddy when I saw the headline on Slashdot:

Man Hacks 911 System, Sends SWAT on Bogus Raid

Now HERE'S a revolutionary! I thought.  But I was disappointed after reading the story:

Officers apprehended and cuffed the resident and his wife, identified as Stacy B. It was moments later they learned the call was false, said Lt. Mike McHenry of the South County Investigations Bureau.

“The danger is significant,” said Lt. Don Barnes, chief of police services for Lake Forest. “That (situation) played out OK, although it scared the victims significantly.”

Ellis is expected to appear in an Orange County courtroom Monday to face charges of computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence, falsely reporting a crime and assault with an assault weapon by proxy.

No!  Bad haX0r!  No Halo for you!

Don't send the freakin' SWAT team after innocent people!  Send them to an abandoned warehouse, or an empty lot, or somewhere in the middle of the desert.  If he'd done this, sending SWAT on wild goose chases that prevent them from terrorizing other people, I'd call the kid a hero.  But deploying them to an occupied house isn't much different from pointing a loaded gun at people yourself (which explains the interesting "assault with an assault weapon by proxy" charge against the kid).

“It’s not a prank,” Emami said. “People’s lives were in danger.”

Given SWAT's propensity for shooting people, I'd have to say he's right.

Damn it, say it ain't so.  I like Dell—we own two of their laptops—but their high-end performance systems (the XPS line) have been somewhat underwhelming.  Of course, that may be precisely why they're interested in Alienware; Dell has an exclusive deal with Intel, while Alienware builds systems with both Intel and AMD processors.  And most gaming system integrators (and gamers) tend to favor AMD.

I still can't help but be worried.  Mergers of computer companies inevitably result in one company disappearing entirely, and in this case, it sure as hell won't be Dell.  They may allow Alienware to continue as an independent subsidiary (and with better financial backing), or they may swallow it whole, like Compaq did to Digital, which at the time made some of the best laptop systems on the market.  And Compaq to this day still builds steaming turds masquerading as PCs, their merger with HP notwithstanding.  Not a good time for my favorite system builder.

I've spent the past few evenings cleaning up and tuning my computers, using this very helpful page as a guide.  It's amazing just how much maintenance Windows XP requires to keep it running reasonably well.  It has always been my experience that systems like Linux and BSD have required more hands-on maintenance, while rewarding you with a much more stable and secure computing platform.  But XP, while technically easier to use, is also a lot more complicated, which explains in part its security vulnerabilities—and the need to periodically send it to the day spa, so to speak.

So I've been working on that, and have come across some nifty tools along the way:

Trend Micro HouseCall: This free online scanner will detect viruses, spyware and malware.  I recommend using the Java version as it seems to be quicker than the ActiveX-based scanner.

avast! Home Edition: A free anti-virus package for non-commercial use.  I installed this on my desktop PC since my old Norton AV subscription lapsed long ago and there is little point in buying anti-virus software for a computer I rarely use.  The interface is slick and updates are always free.

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner): This utility lives up to its name.  The first time I ran it I was astounded to find that it had removed nearly half a gigabyte of assorted detritus scattered around my hard drive.  It will also look through your registry and remove old and non-functional keys, and even scrub temporary files from your other applications.  A couple of caveats: it will happily blow away your cookies, even for sites you visit regularly, and there's an option on the Windows tab to clean up "old prefetch data".  Be sure to uncheck that.  The prefetcher helps improve XP's performance; deleting its contents will slow program load times considerably.  Apparently this is a persistent meme on the 'net.

Ad-Aware SE and Spybot: I'm of the opinion that anti-spyware software are largely identical in function and performance, but it doesn't hurt to have ready access to more than one program.  I've used Ad-Aware and Spybot and they both work well.  Spybot gets the edge simply because it's free as in beer, while Ad-Aware is free as in light beer: you have to pay for the full version.

Autoruns: This nifty utility will show you which programs start automatically when you boot or log into Windows, and allows you to disable programs you don't need.  I found this very handy for getting rid of the useless (to me) Real Player and QuickTime agents in the system tray.

Cacheman: A disk cache and memory management tool.  Use the wizard and accept the defaults, and Cacheman will optimally configure your disk cache and make a few settings tweaks that will boost overall performance.

Other tweaks to speed up your system:

• Defrag your hard drive regularly.
  
• Turn off some of the eye candy on the Windows interface, such as menu and window animations and screen font smoothing (anti-aliasing).
  
• Keep your drivers updated.
  
• Stop visiting the goat porn sites and picking up 3,325 trojans in the process.

Or you could always buy a Mac.

Although not strictly performance-related, I still recommend that you drop Internet Explorer and Outlook Express as your web and e-mail clients and switch to Firefox and Thunderbird.

My public service announcement for the week.

Transferring my Thunderbird e-mail installation from my PC to my new laptop was as simple as copying over the application data file.  Boom!  All of my e-mail and my various folders, my address book, and most importantly my filters and junk mail settings were ready to go.  This was by far the easiest e-mail migration I've ever experienced, and reaffirmed my conviction that Thunderbird is the best e-mail client available for Windows.

Managing e-mail migrations on Outlook Express was never easy.  Every time I reinstalled Windows—a task which thankfully became less common after switching to XP—I could copy my e-mail folders and address book easily enough, but I could never track down where my message filters were kept.  As a result, I had to re-enter all of those rules every damn time.

What's really funny is that Thunderbird will happily transfer all of the mail, address book entries, and filters from Outlook Express.  When I first started using Thunderbird I barely had to do more than give it my account name and password.  It took care of everything else.

This is how you attract and keep users: remove all barriers to migration ("it doesn't support my address book," "it doesn't crash as much as Outlook Express and I'd like to stay in my comfort level"), and do everything the old product did, and do it well.  Thunderbird easily satisfies both criteria.