Category Archives: Tech - Page 27

Why I buy DVDs but not CDs

Posted by on September 14, 2003 Comments Off on Why I buy DVDs but not CDs

Note: This is an entry I posted in this Slashdot story, it may be of interest to readers here as well.
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In the past year I’ve bought over 52 DVDs that works out to at least one a week. In that same time period I bought exactly NO CDs. Why is this? The DVDs are a much better value, many cast as little as $10, few are more than $19, they typically include making of featurettes, director’s commentary, music videos, actor interviews, a good story PLUS the movie itself.

I would say that I love listening to music, but at the prices CDs are going for I find that my money is MUCH better spent on DVDs. For the same or less than the price of a CD I can buy a movie with all sorts of extras. The DVD has audio on it and a picture, the CD just has audio and no extras, why should it cost the same? The answer is it shouldn’t.

I also have a lot of problems with the way the RIAA is trying to keep hold of their antiquated distribution methods and huge markups. Why should I support thier lawsuits with my money? Granted, the MPAA has not been the best player all along wither (they fought the introduction of the VCR for example) of course they have learned their lesson as the sales of movies in VHS form have made them a bundle of money. The RIAA refuses to see the future of music, not even doing a good job of promoting legal online distribution methods or interested in lowering prices.

I’ll continue to add to my DVD collection, but until prices are MUCH more reasonable for a CD (say under $5 for ANY title I’m interested in) I won’t be buying very many, if any. If the price and distribution method are right I think the record companies can get people to buy music again. Of course, this assumes the music is worth listening to, but that’s another story.

Case #: 108688087, The Evil AOL

Posted by on June 16, 2003 3 comments

A problem has cropped up with moving my email server in-house (literally) as I mentioned last time. No, my email server is working great and my configs are impeccable. The problem is with the evil postmaster at aol.com. Although we no longer have any problem getting our mail server to send mail to people it seems that the evil powers that be at aol don’t want anyone at AOL to get email from us. I never noticed the problem as I don’t typically communicate with people that use such an inferior service and pay such inflated rates, unfortuantely my Mom has a bunch of friends that haven’t yet discovered the joy of brodband or the locally-owned (and less expensive) alternatives.

After digging around for some time I discovered that AOL has decided to block all incoming email from servers that do not have static IP (business class) addresses. While this effort may seem prudent to block spammers sending massive quantities of spam through home email servers, in fact more spam gets through to AOL users than almost any other service and my legitimate email does not. I was able to track down a phone number for sysadmins with problems sending mail to AOL (imagine having a phone number for just that problem) of course it was long distance and not an 800 number. After getting a postmaster from AOL on the line I was asked (interregated) as to why I needed to run a server from home, I explained that my ISP provided unreliable mail services, they proceeded to tell me that I needed to upgrade my broadband to business class service (more than twice what I pay now per month) or I needed to relay my mail (hmm interesting they suggest doing the same thing spammers do to hind where the mail really comes from) I found both solutions totally unacceptable.

I proceeded to call their standard customer support 800 number as if I were a customer (my parents are) of AOL who could not receive mail. I got some poor lady in India who tried to tell me first I had mail controlls set up on my AOL screen name preventing the mail from getting through. Finally I got her to beleive this was not the case and shoe could hardly believe this was the case. Eventually she opened a trouble ticket with the real engineers who would “look into and promptly solve my problem, very promptly” of course I had no faith that this would happen. To add insult to injury before she let me off the hook I “needed to talk to a ‘benefit’s specialist’ about getting $35 free in my AOL online shopping account” the “benefit’s specialist” was someone playing pre-recorded messages trying to get me to sign up for some service, when I made a comment such as “no thanks” they would hit a button saying “if you would take a moment to reconsider this valuable offer from AOL…” it was an endless and vicious cycle, I finally gave up and said “I am now terminating this call” what kind of psycho organization tries to sell you something when you finish with a tech support call? This is stooping to a new low, even for AOl…it was entertaining though.

In the end I gave in, sort of. I have set Postfix to route mail going to AOL.Com and only AOL.Com email addresses through my ISP’s unrelaible mail server. It’s not the best solution, nor the internet standards based correct one, but after all someone has to help these poor AOL users see the light, next project… Tag all messages to AOL addresses with a link to this post so everyone we send mail to at AOL understands why AOL really is an evil corporation that just won’t play with the same internet standards everyone else does.

Internal Email

Posted by on June 10, 2003 Comments Off on Internal Email

Another quick note… You may also find it interesting to hear that I’ve moved my email hosting to a server here at home. I was having too many problems with the uptime from my hosting providor (they have great web service, but not so great email) so I woke up on Saturday and decided enough was enough (it had been down most of the week) and I had recently received an old Dell PowerEdge 4200 Series Server which I had installed Debian/GNU Linux and the Postfix MTA on. It took most of the day to get it up and running to my satisfaction (including installing SpamAssassin and some other goodies) but I’m much happier now , and as an added bonus I now have a backup MX in case my connection goes down (I have a mutual backup MX with a company who I did some work for) and I have total control over the system including SpamAssassin settings.

Cleaning My Desk

Posted by on June 10, 2003 2 comments

I’ve finally been getting around to some unpacking from school and been able to get my desk mostly cleared off and my room, well my room is better than it was, but I still have a few piles of books and a box of stuff to go though. Anyway… I got this email tonight from a reader of the site and thought I would share my reply as well in case anyone else finds this site and has experianced simialar problems.

Hi,

I came across your web site stating that you had bought the above DVD RAM. I am having an issue, and you being a tech type, I thought I might be able to get some insight that Panasonic’s useless tech support could not help me with. First of all, I am running Windows XP Pro, 512 meg of DDR RAM, 1.5 Ghz Athlon based system.

What is happening is really odd. The system perfectly recognizes the CD-ROM and DVD-Ram capabilities of this drive, however, when I try to access it, it says it can not access the drive due to an I/O error (not insert a disc…). I have the recommended 80 conductor/40 Pin IDE ATA 133/100/66/33 compatible cable on it. And the other CD-RW I have works perfectly (a Creative Labs CD burner). Windows XP reports the drive is working fine and sees no conflicts.

The drive does work intermittently. What would you recommend as far as first things to check. It may even be a mild software conflict. Any help you can provide is appreciated as Panasonic has proven they can’t help much at all.

Thanks
David

====My Reply====
Hi David,
The driver for this drive is built into Windows XP so it would be highly unlikely to be a software conflict, unless the problem only appeared when burning a disc. After reseating the cable, trying another cable or possibly trying another IDE port on the motherboard (or better yet in a different system) I would report it as a hardware drive failure to Panasonic. My gut feeling is you got a bad drive but it’s worth checking the drive in another system if you have access to one. I’m using my drive in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 without any problems so I doubt greatly it’s a simple software fix. Best Luck and thanks for visiting my site. If I can offer any more help please let me know.

–Ben Franske

On the roof again, just can’t wait to get on the roof again

Posted by on April 13, 2003 Comments Off on On the roof again, just can’t wait to get on the roof again

Yesterday after our local Saturday morning ham radio get together a few of us decided to get our repeater’s antenna outside to try and get our coverage increased in the area. We’ve been waiting for months to get a hole drilled in the penthouse wall so we can get the antenna out on the roof, but it still hasn’t been done. Hoping to get a temporary solution in place we bought a jumbo size stoarge tote and put all the elecronics gear inside of it and just put it out on the roof. I climbed up the roof tower, mounted the antenna on our tower and ran a feedline down to our tub o’ electronics. Afterwards we took a ride around the couty to see how our coverage had improved, though it’s much much better than it was it still needs a little work, we now cover the entire town though.

In the evening I baked some frozen dough sweet rolls I had purchased earlier in the week. I finished studying for another professional certification test scheduled for Monday while they were baking. I also went out on my weekly grocery shopping trip and picked up the neccecities for college life including a wide selection of pears (my fruit of the week).

This morning I got up and did some more reading for my SCUBA class and did my laundry. Early in the afternoon I headed out for a Sunday matinee performance of Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, preformed by University Theater. I’m just about ready to write my performance analysis paper for my theater class now. It’s an epsodic play as opposed to the climactic style you usually see performed. It takes a look at a typical day in a small Welsh fishing village and once you get over it being episodic rather than climactic it is quite a fun play to watch.

So much time, so little to say. Strike that, reverse it.

Posted by on April 10, 2003 2 comments

I hate being so redundant, everytime I write one of these it seems as if I’m saying how busy I’ve been; but this time, as always, I really have been busy. In the past few weeks I’ve continued to search for a summer job, participated in two wild chats with my friends from Leoville, studied for and passed a General Class FCC Element 3 exam, been studying for three Cisco exams I want/need to take before the end of the semester, woked on my Cisco instructor certification, interviewed for a summer internship, replaced the hard drives in both my laptop and desktop, started a SCUBA diving certification class, took a severe weather spotting training course from the National Weather Service, continued lobbying and meetings with the university for our Amateur Radio Club, debated purchasing a new ham radio, dvd writing package, Tivo/Replay and flat screen monitor. Oh yeah, and all my normal classwork too.

First things first though. My search for a summer job has prooved fruitful at last. Before returning to Light N Trax again this year for summer employment I decided to try and find a corporate IT internship so I could get a better taste of what I might be doing after graduation while gaining some real-world experiance at the same time. I sent out a pretty good number of resumes and cover letters, got a few responses none of which were promising. Eventually someone my Dad works for suggested applying for the summer IT internship at State Fund Mutual Companies which is an insurance company that specializes in Workers’ Compensation insurance in Minnesota. I headed back home last weekend after getting a call that they were interested in interviewing me. I arranged a ride home just in time to make it to my 2:45PM interview which wasn’t overly painful. They said they’d get back to me early this week. I was called and offered the position on Tuesday and I accepted with minor negotiations on my part Wednesday. I’ll be starting there May 20th at 8:30AM.

Now, since I don’t have a boatload of time the only other thing I’ll cover here (unless there is public outcry to hear about another of my recent activities) is my purchase dillema of the day. It all started again with Leo, yes, Leo. You see a few days ago Leo wrote an article on his message board about hacking his Tivo then on The ScreenSavers Wednesday they had a segment about using your PC as a ReplayTV node. All this Tivo/Replay talk got me thinking again about how handy it would be to have one of these gadgets for all the time shifting I do. For a number of reasons I decided it would now be practical for me to sell some of my VCRs and buy a PVR. After exhaustive research today I found that although they had gotten cheaper you could not simply use them as digital VCRs, you have to subscribe to the guide service for them or they cease working! This is either a monthly or one-time fee. I hate monthly fees and when you add the one-time fee to the cost of the device it becomes considerably more expensive. Besides I just don’t like things that have recurring fees and/or rely on a manufacturer to keep them going or they become doorstops, too much power for me to give up. I decided to investigate set top DVD recorders instead. I found the Panasonic DMR-E30K which allows me to do everything I want, plus burn to DVD-R media as a benefit! I could have this for only $390 at J&R Music and Video.

While I was contemplating this purchase a friend who works with me pointed out a hot deal posted to the Anandtech Forums, Dell is selling an 18″ LCD flat-panel for $390 (after instant rebate and 15% off coupon) as well! I considered getting this as well, but after a few hours of internal struggling I finally decided it wasn’t as important to me right now as any number of other things so I decided against it, we’ll see if this was a good choice or not. Back to the DVD Recorder/PVR debate. I had pretty much decided to get the Panasonic DMR-E30K when I stated thinking about how easy this would make DVD video editing on my PC if I got a PC DVD-R/RW/RAM drive as well. Not to bore you too much with the details, but after quite a bit of research and debate I ended up with the Panasonic SW-9571-CYY which I purchased from AvLogic.Com for $165 and will complement the DMR-E30K nicely allowing me to record on DVD-RAM media, stick it in the PC edit it on the media itself and save it or burn it to DVD-R for more permanent storage. You might ask why I didn’t go with the Sony DRU-500A which I was considering late last year. There are a few reasons actually, first cost, second availibility and third support for the DVD-RAM format. This is an older DVD format that uses random access and so it will work better for on-disk video editing and it’s also the rewritable format supported by the DMR-E30K.

When all is said and done I have a set-top dvd recorder, a computer dvd recorder, some blank dvd media, an internship and talked myself out of the flatscreen. I think I’ll be happy though, and isn’t that what really counts? Hopefully I’ll have some time to blog with more frequency soon. In the meantime I return myself to my regular busy life and you to yours. Stay tuned!

Surprise Email

Posted by on December 12, 2002 Comments Off on Surprise Email

Looking for photos from my mom’s 50th birthday party? Try http://photos.franske.com

I got an email from one of my Telecommunications Professors today saying I should drop by his office to sign something. Having no idea what he had up his sleeve I decided to head over to Modern American Lit early and drop by his office. He wanted to get some club callsigns and needed a club officer to sign on the FCC request. So as of today I am the interim CEO of the UW-Stout Amateur Radio Club.

Let’s backtrack a little bit, as you know I finally got my ham radio licence in early November after meaning to do it for years. I bought a used Icom T7H handheld radio and dove right in to this thrilling hobby. Being a very experimental group of people hams have contributed to everything from telegraph to cell phone and computer technology, but I digress. Right now a hot item in the ham community is voice over the internet radio linking allowing two people on radios to talk around the country or world through the internet. After hearing about this on a repeater at home I talked a professor (and friend) of mine into buying a computer interface for a radio so we could experiment with it. The interface came at the beginning og the week and we’ve spent many days this week experimenting with it and we’ve been having a blast. In any event setting up an internet link and repeater here on a permanent basis is what led to forming the UW-Stout Amatuer Radio club today.

In other news I have passed another Cisco exam, the Remote Access certification, one step closer to the next level CCNP certification. I also plan to pick up a CWNA wireless certification over Christmas break as well as working at Light N Trax where I worked this summer. Yesterday I got a perfect on my Remote Access class practial lab final which was another good feeling. Now all I have left for homework this semester is a 10 page paper related to Richard Wright’s Native Son which is something I’m not looking forward to starting tomorrow. Anyway I’ll be sure to keep you apprised of my happenings as time permits.

Kilo Charlie Zero Oscar Juliet Alpha

Posted by on November 7, 2002 Comments Off on Kilo Charlie Zero Oscar Juliet Alpha

yes ladies and gentelmen today the fcc approved my test rsults and gave me the amateur radio call sign KC0OJA. That’s all I have time to say today, just thought I’d share the news with you all…

the snow has arrived

Posted by on October 20, 2002 Comments Off on the snow has arrived

Here in Western Wisconsin we actually have a small accumulation of snow on the ground tonight and by the time it’s all said and done, they’re estimating 4-6″ in this area. This is all fine and dandy with me because I don’t have major travel plans and I’m ready for snow, but I know it will dissappoint many.

In other news, I know I have been really bad about updating this, but life calls you know? This semester is turning out rather busy actually. In some ways it’s hard to beleive it’s going to be halfway over this week, seems like school just started the other week, in other ways I’m ready for Christmas break. Hopefully things will let up a bit once we get into November though, I think they should.

My laptop is somewhere in Michigan being repaired right now, it needed some backlight and floppy drive repair. Luckily I’m not using it for notes in any class this semester and I should have it back this week I think. The joys of electronics.

Things are progressing well with my Amateur Radio Licence studying and I think I’ll be well prepared for the test on November 2nd. I’m in the midst of writing a speech for speech class right now so that’s the big project at the moment. I am slightly concerned about a Lit midterm coming up this Thursday, mostly because it’s a huge part of our grade in the class and I haven’t experianced this prof’s exams before, hopefully I’ll do well. It’ll be quite a relief to be through that in any event.

Golden ScreenSavers

Posted by on July 17, 2002 Comments Off on Golden ScreenSavers

Tuesday July 16, 2002 – We slept in a little bit again today and got up around 8:30. Our first stop for the day was in Sausalito where we got out and walked around a bit and got a view from the city across the bay. We headed in towards San Francisco but turned off just before the Golden Gate Bridge and went up to an overlook. The fog had lifted pretty well and we were able to get some great views of the city and bridge. I got my picture taken and we took a family picture with the bridge in the background as well. We headed back down and were soon crossing the bridge to the city. After entering San Francisco we drove around Golden Gate Park and through the city a bit. We stopped by the “Pink Lady” houses for another picture with the city in the background. We drove down to Fisherman’s Wharf and found and checked into our penthouse hotel suite which is fantastic for all of us and has a great view of the wharf. We walked down and around the corner to Johnny Rocket’s for a light late lunch and then went back to the hotel where we got the car and drove over to the TechTV studios. My parents and everyone except Anna and myself explored San Francisco a bit more while Anna and I went to see a Live ScreenSavers broadcast. It was a pretty exciting thing to be a part of, the cast and crew of TSS was a great group of people who are truly excited and passionate about their jobs and I look forward to another broadcast on Thursday. Anna and I took a bus and then a trolley from the studio back to the hotel where we met up with our family and we headed out to the Italian section of town where we had reservations for dinner. Afterwards we walked back to Fisherman’s Wharf and explored it in the dark. Now Josie’s making cookies in our kitchen here and everyone’s watching Princess Diaries and then I think my mom wants to watch Live and Let Die, both of which are movies that take place in San Francisco. Tomorrow we have tickets for Alcatraz and we’re going to explore the city some more it should be an interesting few days here, if only it would warm up a little bit!