Category: Uncategorized

While shop­ping on Ama­zon and Newegg, I’ve come across a most frus­trat­ing prob­lem. Both web­sites of­fer a sort­ing fea­ture where you can view items in a par­tic­u­lar cat­e­go­ry usu­al­ly by price or name or re­lease date or things like that. Both al­so al­low buy­ers to rate items after they’ve used them, and al­low po­ten­tial buy­ers to sort the items based on other cus­tomers’ re­views. There is a fair­ly frus­trat­ing prob­lem with this sys­tem, how­ev­er.

Both Ama­zon and Newegg (and pre­sum­ably thou­sands of other on­line stores) sort by *av­er­age cus­tomer rat­ing* when told to sort by rat­ing. If I were shop­ping for, say, com­put­er mon­i­tors on Newegg, and I was look­ing for one that was re­li­able and rat­ed high­ly by a lot of peo­ple, the av­er­age rat­ing sys­tem might be mis­lead­ing. Say there is an HP mon­i­tor for sale, which 500 peo­ple bought and liked. One per­son, how­ev­er, bought it and found a few dead pix­els (man­u­fac­tur­ing de­fect - it hap­pens), and so rat­ed it low. The mon­i­tor’s av­er­age rat­ing would be **4.98** out of **5.00** or some­thing like that.

Now con­sid­er a no-name mon­i­tor that one per­son bought and liked. He or she is the on­ly per­son to have ev­er rat­ed this mon­i­tor, and rat­ed it a 5, mak­ing the mon­i­tor’s av­er­age rat­ing **5.00**. 5.00 for this no-name mon­i­tor is high­er than 4.98 for the HP mon­i­tor - this would put the no-name mon­i­tor *high­er up* on the list if I asked Newegg to sort by “Best rat­ing”.

For a se­lec­tion of two prod­ucts this seems like a mi­nor prob­lem, but if I were look­ing for, per­haps, a new DVD burn­er, the hun­dreds of prod­ucts which re­ceived two or three 5.00 re­views would fill up many pages of my search with ir­rel­e­vant prod­ucts - I would not con­sid­er one or two peo­ple rat­ing a pro­duct a 5.00 to be an ac­cu­rate indi­ca­tion that the pro­duct is, on the whole, re­li­ably con­struct­ed. I would have to wade through all those pages be­fore I found the first pro­duct rat­ed by more than about five peo­ple.

There must be a bet­ter way to sort prod­ucts by cus­tomer rat­ing than sim­ply by av­er­age rat­ing, which pro­duces mis­lead­ing re­sults. Newegg’s sort by num­ber of rat­ings is bet­ter but still not ex­act­ly it. What if five hun­dred peo­ple bought a pro­duct and rat­ed it bad­ly? I think a bet­ter so­lu­tion might be some sort of weight­ed av­er­age - 4.98s can be pulled high­er than 5.00s if they have more rat­ings. Some­thing along the li­nes of (score * num­ber-of-re­views), so that the 500 5.00s that the bet­ter pro­duct re­ceived counts more than the two 5.00s that the in­fe­ri­or pro­duct re­ceived.

This is a mouse that was on­ce bro­ken but is now healed. (A me­chan­i­cal switch on the cir­cuit board was bro­ken; upon fix­ing that, the mouse works al­most like-new.) I was ac­tu­al­ly quite sur­prised at the ex­treme sim­plic­i­ty of the ac­tu­al mouse hard­ware - a cou­ple of re­sis­tors, ca­pac­i­tors, an LED for the sen­sor, and the sen­sor chip it­self. It seems to me that the costs for build­ing such a mouse must be rather cheap in­deed. In fact, I won­der now about the op­ti­cal track­balls out on the mar­ket to­day - mine (the [Kens­ing­ton Ex­pert Mouse][kem]) is to all ap­pear­ances just an up­side-down op­ti­cal mouse with a ball and a cou­ple of ex­tra but­tons; would it be per­haps pos­si­ble to con­struct my own per­fect­ly-func­tion­ing track­ball with on­ly cheap op­ti­cal mouse parts?

[kem]: http://blog.non­graph­i­cal.com/2008/08/kens­ing­ton-ex­pert-mouse-70/

Fas­ci­nat­ing as that may seem, there are in­deed [more ex­cit­ing pro­jects][mt] to at­tend to first.

[mt]: http://ssan­dler.word­press.com/MT­mini/

Here’s how to stop Fire­fox from au­to­mat­i­cal­ly virus scan­ning all down­loads after they’ve fin­ished - some­thing that’s been an­noy­ing me since I’ve up­grad­ed to Fire­fox 3 be­cause of the ex­tra­ne­ous disk ac­cess­es it cre­ates. Open up the `about:con­fig` (open a new tab, type `about:con­fig` in the lo­ca­tion bar), and find the **`browser.down­load.man­ager.scan­When­Done`** val­ue. Type in `browser` in the fil­ter bar for quick search­ing. Set that val­ue to false by dou­ble-click­ing. And that’s it! What, were you ex­pect­ing some­thing more?

(orig­i­nal­ly read [here][ghacks])

[ghacks]: http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/04/dis­able-au­to­mat­ic-virus-scan­ning-in-fire­fox-3/

[Down­load Re­moveDu­pli­cates.py][dl]

[dl]: http://non­graph­i­cal.com/me­dia/uploads/Re­moveDu­pli­cates.py

One of the prob­lems with us­ing hy­brid Win­dows and Lin­ux en­vi­ron­ments is that one needs to watch close­ly for filesys­tem and file anoma­lies and in­con­sis­ten­cies. Dif­fer­ing end-of-line mark­ers, for ex­am­ple, cause many prob­lems when shar­ing files be­tween the two op­er­at­ing sys­tems. One par­tic­u­lar prob­lem I’ve run in­to is that of hav­ing du­pli­cate files, or in other words, mul­ti­ple files with the same file­name. This can hap­pen if, say, you copy a di­rec­to­ry some­where in Win­dows, then switch to Lin­ux and use a tool such as rsync to copy that same di­rec­to­ry over again. If the cap­i­tal­iza­tion is dif­fer­ent, Lin­ux will not re­place the old files, be­cause Lin­ux, un­like Win­dows, is case-sen­si­tive. This will even hap­pen, and is tech­ni­cal­ly ac­cept­able, on NTFS filesys­tems.

The so­lu­tion I’ve come up with is this sim­ple script, called Re­moveDu­pli­cates.py. Ob­vi­ous­ly, you need [Python][py] in­stalled to run it, but it has no ad­di­tion­al de­pen­den­cies. Sim­ply run it *in the di­rec­to­ry you wish to clean*, and it should do the rest. Note that you shouldn’t use this for en­tire filesys­tems (yet), be­cause it will use ridicu­lous amounts of mem­o­ry if it is given a high num­ber of files. [Down­load it here][dl]!

[py]: http://www.python.org/

P.S. Al­so, I can­not guar­an­tee that this tool will work as in­tend­ed or will be bug-free. Use wise­ly.

Some of the stuff that Log­itech has been putting out re­cent­ly is cer­ti­fi­ably gim­micky. For ex­am­ple, the *wire­less* track­ball mice ([Cord­less Track­man Op­ti­cal][cto]) that Log­itech makes. The whole point of a track­ball is that it *stays put* on your desk: on­ly the ball moves! Why, then, is it made wire­less? Wire­less mice are cool be­cause the cord doesn’t get in the way when it moves along with the mouse, but the track­ball base doesn’t move! Log­itech’s site even calls the wire­less fea­ture “con­ve­nient” - I per­son­al­ly don’t think that need­ing to change bat­ter­ies for a fea­ture that the de­vice doesn’t re­quire is con­ve­nient.

[cto]: http://www.log­itech.com/in­dex.cfm/mice_point­ers/track­balls/de­vices/189&cl=us,en

One more seem­ing­ly-use­less Log­itech fea­ture: the G15 key­board’s LCD. Gamers that would buy the G15 key­board - most like­ly MMO play­ers and, to a lesser ex­tent, FPS play­ers. The G15’s most out­stand­ing fea­ture is its pletho­ra of assignable macro keys, which makes it won­der­ful for, say, WoW. Why, though, would you look down from the game on your mon­i­tor to check some dim­ly-lit stats on your key­board LCD? Seems point­less to me.

Don’t get me wrong: Log­itech is a won­der­ful pe­riph­er­al com­pa­ny. They make what I con­sid­er to be the world’s best gen­er­al-pur­pose mice (Dell’s ba­sic USB mouse in­clud­ed with their desk­tops, my per­son­al fa­vorite, was[^1] made by Log­itech). They make rel­a­tive­ly good, us­able key­boards, some­times with a touch of my pre­ferred min­i­mal­is­tic style (Di­Novo Edge). And, de­spite ar­gu­ments be­tween Log­itech, Raz­er, and now Mi­crosoft users about which gam­ing mouse is the *best*, there’s no doubt that Log­itech’s, espe­cial­ly the G5, are among the top gam­ing mice avail­able. It’s just that no­body re­al­ly wants to spend ex­tra money buy­ing fea­tures that are com­plete­ly un­nec­es­sary.

[^1]: I’m not en­tire­ly sure that it is any­more; I don’t have this in­for­ma­tion.

My cur­rent ques­tion is this: why are there few (if any!) ca­su­al/par­ty mul­ti­play­er games for the PC? I’ve been look­ing around for games that might ap­peal to more than just me and my hard­core gam­ing friends, in a (per­haps vain) at­tempt to cre­ate so­cial gath­er­ings through video games/LAN par­ties. Be­cause ev­ery­one here at school has a com­put­er, and net­work­ing is al­ready very-well tak­en care of, it’s def­i­nite­ly very plau­si­ble. The on­ly things miss­ing now are the games.
Read more…

So here it is, fi­nal­ly: the le­gendary [Google browser][chromeurl].

[chromeurl]: http://www.google.com/chrome

And like ev­ery­thing else that Google puts out, it is a glo­ri­ous­ly in­cred­i­ble piece of work. It has the best char­ac­ter­is­tics a piece of soft­ware could have: it’s sim­ple, fast, re­spon­sive, and stable. I’ve been run­ning it for just a lit­tle while now, and while We­bKit’s ren­der­ing (espe­cial­ly of fonts) is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from Gecko’s, ev­ery­thing works just about the same as in Fire­fox… it’s all just way, way faster. Open­ing new tabs is faster. Us­ing Gmail is faster (thanks, no doubt, to the new V8 JavaScript engine). Writ­ing posts is faster. It’s re­al­ly quite in­cred­i­ble… in fact, pos­si­bly one of the most im­pres­sive open-source de­vel­op­ments to date, right up there with Fire­fox 1 and the Lin­ux ker­nel. [Give it a spin your­self and see][chromeurl].

Some­thing I dis­cov­ered to­day: [DDvo­rak][dd], a key­board lay­out loose­ly based on Dvo­rak which caters specif­i­cal­ly to de­vel­op­ers or pro­gram­mers. There’s a [lay­out tester][lt] on the same site that mea­sures the over­all ef­fi­cien­cy of var­i­ous typ­ing lay­outs with any text that you choose.

[dd]: http://www.si­teuri.ro/dvo­rak/DDvo­rak.aspx
[lt]: http://www.si­teuri.ro/dvo­rak/

DDvo­rak, on first glance, is a com­plete­ly unortho­dox typ­ing lay­out. It re­quires com­ma as a dead key for many sym­bols, and Alt­Gr as a mod­i­fier for many others. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, many things are moved to un­con­ven­tion­al lo­ca­tions (BackSpace is where ‘B’ is on QW­ER­TY key­boards, for ex­am­ple). How­ev­er, the [lay­out tester][lt] con­sis­tent­ly mea­sures the ef­fi­cien­cy of DDvo­rak as sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than ei­ther Dvo­rak or [Cole­mak][cm], no mat­ter whether typ­ing English or code.

[cm]: http://cole­mak.com/

I think I’m go­ing to have to give DDvo­rak a try, soon, if on­ly I could fig­ure out how to rad­i­cal­ly change key­board lay­outs in X.org… of course, it’s easy with [Win­dows][msklc]. It wouldn’t be Win­dows if there weren’t a tool for ev­ery­thing.

[msklc]: http://www.mi­crosoft.com/glob­aldev/tools/msklc.mspx

I just found out about (old news) the Star­craft 1.15.2 patch, other­wise known as the “of­fi­cial­ly-spon­sored no-CD patch”. I wish more game com­pa­nies would fol­low this ex­am­ple and re­al­ize that copy pro­tec­tion is use­less: no mat­ter how ad­vanced, gamers fig­ure out ways to avoid copy pro­tec­tion, and it just caus­es prob­lems for in­no­cent and le­git­i­mate users any­way.

On the other side of the coin, more gamers should just grow up and re­al­ize that com­pa­nies *do* want to get paid for mak­ing games, and that they should think about may­be pay­ing for their games ev­ery on­ce in a while. Take the ad­vice found in no-CD crack READMEs to heart: if you like this game, please con­sid­er pur­chas­ing it. If both sides of the “bat­tle” work to­geth­er, we can may­be end this ridicu­lous an­ti-con­sumer non­sense.

Still, it would be nice if more game com­pa­nies would patch their games like this. Prefer­ably a lit­tle soon­er after their game is re­leased too!

Bun­dled with Gi­ga­byte moth­er­boards is a small util­i­ty called “`@BIOS`”, which pur­ports to have the abil­i­ty to up­date the moth­er­board BIOS from with­in Win­dows, XP or Vis­ta. A lot of “ad­vanced” com­put­er users tend to be wary of such a propo­si­tion, but Toshiba lap­top BIOS­es ac­tu­al­ly do have this func­tion­al­i­ty and it works quite well.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Gi­ga­byte’s tool does *not* work as ex­pect­ed. I tried to up­date my BIOS from with­in Win­dows Vis­ta, with *no other pro­grams run­ning*, and **the pro­gram crashed** in the mid­dle of flash­ing the ROM. For­tu­nate­ly, I ex­pect­ed that my board would be dead, so I looked some stuff up on Google be­fore I re­boot­ed. Posts on some fo­rums told me that the BIOS would au­to-re­cov­er an im­age from the hard drive, so I down­load­ed Gi­ga­byte’s lat­est BIOS from their web­site and put it on the root of my drive. I was lucky; when I re­boot­ed, the BIOS found the im­age and was able to re­cov­er it­self.

Lesson learned? Avoid @BIOS like the plague.