De-Icing With A Broom

Bad weather including snow is something that doesn't occur in southern parts of France very frequently. And seemingly, when it does people aren't all that prepared. Today I flew Air France AF7711 from Nice to Paris CDG. Last night it snowed slightly in Nice and the wings of most aircraft... [Read article]

Free.FR and My ADSL

Just got my ASDL connection set up in France this weekend after a few months of work to get it sorted. (Mostly because the provider Free.FR required proof that I am the rightful owner of the phone line I registered with - something which is not that easy when the... [Read article]

Zen Micro - "No License to Play"

Had my first issue with the Zen Micro / Napster To Go combo today. Suddenly many of my Napster downloaded files refused to play, citing "No Licence to Play, please sync with PC". Brilliant. So I tried to sync with the PC, but no luck, seemingly the licenses didn't copy... [Read article]

Where Does Norway Get Most Of Its Income?

Another good question found in the referral logs. The best place to get answers to any question relating to Norway and numbers is Statistics Norway, the governments statistics branch, which every year publishes the Statistical Yearbook, hundreds of pages of numbers about Norway. The answer to our question could be... [Read article]

RSS Aggregator 'Java/1.4.2_02'

Lately I have been taking quite a few hits on my index.rdf with the browser reported as 'Java/1.4.2_02'. I assume this is what happens if you use the java.net classes to connect to a web-server, but does anyone know if this is a off-the-shelf aggregator or some home made product?... [Read article]

Executables on an Audio CD

Found in the referral log: can't play cd computer no tracks only exe Well, sorry to say you probably bought a CD with copy protection.... [Read article]

Trillian 3 and SIMP

Someone was searching Google for how to configure Trillian 3 and Secway SIMP, and ended up here. It is quite simple; open up the connection preferences of the connection you want to pipe through SIMP, change server host to localhost or 127.0.0.1. Recycle the connection. PS: SIMP supports piping of... [Read article]

Virus and Spam Storms

Caught an interesting little thing in my mail logs the other day. Take note of the two sudden and sustained peaks. The graph shows incoming SMTP connections. Now the next graph shows messages delivered. The increased number of incoming SMTP connections seems to have no impact on the number of... [Read article]

Off-the-Record Messaging

The Register reports from Codecon about the new Off-the-Record Messaging protocol. In short OTR gives paranoid instant messagers authenticated secrecy and repudiation. According to the authors this is perfect for the paranoid chatter that wants to engage in casual conversations online, wants to keep them secret, but wants to be... [Read article]

Plaxo, Ringo and Bebo

Keeping ones address book in sync has never been easy. People move, and forget to tell you where. Changing e-mail address is at times more popular than changing underwear. As a result trying to keeping things up-to-date has been the driving force behind many a website. Lately I have been... [Read article]

Copyright, Music and Fair Use

Norwegian copyright law has up until now been very relaxed, relaxed to the extent that downloading of music and copying between friends has been legal. Well, that is not going to last long. A new law is in the pipeline, and the proposition (norwegian only) put forward to the Norwegian... [Read article]

Creative Zen Micro - The First Hours

Today my Creative Zen Micro arrived. :) We love Creative, we love Amazon. And we don't hate Parcelforce too much for spending a bit too much time on delivery. First impressions: It is small, beautiful and cool. Most design principles have been stolen from Apple, but well, who cares. Compared... [Read article]

Napster To Go - Here We Go Again

The new Napster To Go service seems to be a hot potato these days. After posting their initial attack the Register received a load of letters both for and against the service. Wierd thing; most people either love it or hate it. And especially the haters have a tendency to... [Read article]

Radio Playlists Online

Ever listened to the radio and wondered "who is playing that catchy tune, I am sure I've heard it before..."? No more... Now a few creative radio channels have published their playlists, searchable by date and time. So next time you ask yourself "which song is this", just take note... [Read article]

Napster And Sound Quality - Part II

Ah, wonderful news... With the new 3.0 version of Napster streaming is up to 128kbps, and hence there is no longer any difference in quality between streamed and downloaded music. :) My laptop's harddrive is all happy now!... [Read article]

Upgrading to a Zen Micro / Napster To Go

I have been thinking of upgrading my old and trustworthy Creative Nomad Zen 20GB for quite a while now. It's battery has seen better days, it is no longer very beautiful (compared to e.g. the iPod mini), and even more, since I started using Napster I kind of stopped buying... [Read article]