welcome to the funcave

first impression

went after work tonight and picked up one of microsoft’s swanky new remote keyboards for windows xp media center edition tonight like i’ve been talking about for awhile now.

my thoughts:

setup was beyond easy. as in…ludicrous easy. as in…i removed the keyboard from the packaging, inserted the batteries, and i could start using it. nice!

the size of the keyboard is just about perfect. it’s smaller than a normal keyboard, but it’s still wide enough to avoid that cramped kind of feeling you get when using a gyration keyboard. it’s also wide enough to rest comfortably in your lap, but not too wide as to have to rest on the arms of a recliner.

the layouts of the media control keys on either side are well-placed. the keys are fairly quiet, altho not silent. keypress has a similar feel to the keys on my inspiron 8600 at work. all in all, not bad on the keys.

the keyboard offers backlighting for low-light use, but only for the media control keys. this is a huge mistake, as i would use backlit qwerty keys for regular typing all the time.

but that’s not the reason for the thumbs-down, nor is it the reason i’ll most likely be returning this keyboard. nope, the real dealbreaker for me is the integrated pointing device.

i mentioned before that i wanted a single input device i could use with my new mce machine. i didn’t want to have to juggle two different devices for mouse and keyboard functions.

i thought this keyboard would fit the bill, but…the damn pointing device is totally fracking useless. and it’s not because the click and right-click buttons are on the left side of the keyboard, and the pointer is on the right. truth be told, i kind of like that setup.

no…the reason the pointing device is useless is the simple fact that it requires you to push down first before it will register any movements. and a good bit of pressure is required to engage it. so much so that it is impossible to make fine movements with the pointing device. either you aren’t pushing hard enough to make the movements, or you are pushing so hard that when you do move it, it jumps all over the place.

and of course, to add insult to (repetitive stress) injury, in the instruction booklet with this keyboard is the obligatory section of pages titled healthy computing guide, containing all sorts of tips for avoiding a musculoskeletal disorder (or msd, for short), including a subsection titled go lightly, which includes this gem:

use a light touch when clicking a mouse button or when using a joystick or other controller

gee…ya think?

my thumbs take enough abuse as it is during the day working my crackberry. they sure don’t need any more work to do, especially when it is so imprecise and clunky.

i guess the industrial design engineers wanted to avoid accidental movement of the mouse if a user bumped it in error. so…why not a recessed trackpoint? or a mini-trackball? anything would be better than the pos they’ve put on it.

i’ll work with it this weekend. if i still feel the same way about it by thursday of next week, i’m taking it back next friday, and trying one of these babies.

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some thoughts for the victim

seems like the head of data security for that bank i just mentioned was 26.

pretty young if you ask me.

so i’m wondering how he got the job. how much experience with data security could he have had? makes me wonder if he perhaps was a script-kiddie who went “legit.”

so many questions.

but most of all…did he not know that using one of the bank’s own laptops would leave the mac address of the machine somewhere in the trail?

my suggestion to his employer: besides prosecuting him for theft, i’d go after him for past wages. patently obvious you were paying somebody who didn’t know what the heck he was doing, whether it was legal or illegal activity he was engaged in.

then contract with a bonded security firm who knows what they are doing to batten down your hatches. now that folks know you are “hittable,” i guarantee someone will try to come rattle your doors.

good luck.

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the tail doesn’t wag the dog

so i see this news item, the headline of which implies that an unprotected wifi drop was to blame for a bank getting robbed of a cool quarter mil.

of course, i figured it would be about the bank’s own wifi being left open or something.

but noooooooooooooo…i couldn’t have been more wrong, altho nowhere near as wrong as the story.

for all the media morons who engage in sloppy tech reporting, here’s a quick lesson in how a simple thing like cause-and-effect actually works. maybe you should try this kind of approach for your next story:

when a bank’s own head of data security gives accomplices stolen software and bogus access codes to carry out illegal transactions…it is an inside job. nothing high-tech or hard to understand about that.

now, to help divert suspicion, the accomplices used an open wifi drop to carry out the transactions.

the thieves could have used a damn tin can and string to connect, but that still wouldn’t change the fact that without the access set up by the bank’s employee, they wouldn’t have gotten in.

pushing the wifi angle is sloppy at best.

finally, the last two lines of the story state:

Risu said it’s difficult for companies to guard against this type of crime when internal staff are involved. “I suppose they could make their recruitment process more airtight,” he said.

gee…you don’t say.

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what’s in a name, part trois

true story:

knew a network admin once who named servers after women he was interested in, or dating at the time. one-track mind kinda guy, ya might say.

of course, after his romances ended…every disk failure would also be a painful reminder of his failure at love.

personally, i’m thinking he’d have been much better off to just go get tattooed or something.

i’ll take tattoo removal any day over trying to un-train users once they’ve imprinted (kinda like baby birds) on a resource name.

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a moment of silence

joe ranft, one of the central folks at pixar, and a huge creative force in modern animated storytelling, died yesterday.

that i cry like a baby every time i watch the ending of monsters inc. is a testament to the man’s genius.

no, i’m not in the industry…but i follow it more than most folks, i’d guess. mainly because if i wasn’t doing what i do now for a living (tech monkey), i would have pursued animation as a career.

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