{"id":519,"date":"2008-01-04T09:13:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-04T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=519"},"modified":"2009-01-15T12:17:58","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T16:17:58","slug":"odd-lots-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=519","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Pete Albrecht sent me a link to a collection of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.germancorner.com\/fonts\/index.html\">free                 fonts with a German flavor<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Pertinent to the above, Pete sent a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ampsoft.net\/utilities\/FontViewer.php\">a                 nice free font viewer<\/a> from AMPSoft. <\/li>\n<li>Alas, font rendering is one of the areas where Ubuntu (and Linux                 generally) is <i>way<\/i> behind Windows.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/community.ca.com\/blogs\/securityadvisor\/archive\/2007\/12\/20\/sears-com-join-the-community-get-spyware.aspx\">An                 almost unbelievable piece of spyware is being installed by Sears,                 Roebuck<\/a> on the machines of people who join &#8220;My SHC Community.&#8221;                 Good God: The software installs a proxy that causes <i>all<\/i>                 of your Web activity\u2014whether associated with My SHC or not\u2014to                 be intercepted. Disclosure of the spyware is buried in the small                 print way down in the thick of a 54-page &#8220;privacy policy.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Here&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/davisfreeberg.com\/2008\/01\/03\/bad-copp-no-netflix\/\">yet                 another reason not to use Vista<\/a>: It&apos;s all about protecting                 Microsoft and the Big Media outfits that Microsoft is trying to                 impress. What they did to this guy is criminal, but predictable.                 DRM technologies like this are the reason I do not buy downloads                 of music or video.<\/li>\n<li>I inadvertently validated a lot of people&apos;s objections to ebooks                 recently: I lost the wall-wart charger for my Sony Reader. I simply                 don&apos;t know where it is, and the Reader is dead as a doornail for                 lack of juice. I&apos;m sure it&apos;s here in the house somewhere, but                 until I find it, well, paper is looking <i>mighty<\/i> good.<\/li>\n<li>Pertinent to the above: I recently purchased a 109-year-old                 copy of a theology journal containing an article on the Old Catholic                 movement. The journal is as readable as it was in 1898\u2014and                 the several ebooks stored on my Sony Reader might as well be on                 Mars. We have to work on this. DRM and deprecated media formats                 aren&apos;t our only problems. Could an ebook reader be made with solar                 panels on the back side so you could charge it by flipping it                 over and laying it on a sunny windowsill for an hour?<\/li>\n<li>Also in the ebook field is <a href=\"http:\/\/crave.cnet.com\/8301-1_105-9838934-1.html?tag=nl.e501\">a                 report from Crave<\/a> pointing to <a href=\"http:\/\/igorsk.blogspot.com\/2007\/12\/hacking-kindle-part-1-getting-console.html\">Igor                 Skochinsky&apos;s blog entries reverse-engineering the Kindle<\/a>.                 There&apos;s some interesting stuff in there that hasn&apos;t been turned                 on yet, further cementing my conviction (now having actually seen                 Jim Strickland&apos;s unit) that as ugly as it is, the Kindle is the                 most innovative thing the ebook world has yet seen. That doesn&apos;t                 make it perfect, but I&apos;m less dismissive than I was.<\/li>\n<li>Every now and I then I spot something that makes me say, &#8220;Damn,                 that&apos;s clever.&#8221; The Make Blog highlighted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.supermarkethq.com\/product\/208\">earrings                 that can become earplugs when ambient noise gets too high<\/a>.                 Carol and I don&apos;t go to many live concerts for precisely that                 reason: Everything&apos;s too loud and gives her headaches. Yes, the                 plug portion should be designed so that it looks less like a shuttlecock,                 but the inventor gets credit for thinking outside the box.<\/li>\n<li>My Kodak EasyShare V530 digital camera (which died at warranty                 expiration plus three weeks) may be replaced by <a href=\"http:\/\/reviews.cnet.com\/digital-cameras\/kodak-easyshare-v1253-black\/4505-6501_7-32591630.html?tag=nl.e501\">this                 model<\/a>. 12 megapixels! Are we getting to the point of diminishing                 returns on camera resolution? (I actually like it for other features,                 like taking the picture when you press the button and not three                 seconds later.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pete Albrecht sent me a link to a collection of free fonts with a German flavor. Pertinent to the above, Pete sent a link to a nice free font viewer from AMPSoft. Alas, font rendering is one of the areas where Ubuntu (and Linux generally) is way behind Windows. An almost unbelievable piece of spyware [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-hardware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":534,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}