Safari 3: “cannot decode raw data” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1015)

Out of the blue, when I launched Safari 3 on my MacBook, I started receiving the error: The error was: “cannot decode raw data” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1015) when trying to access My Yahoo!

To fix, I went to Safari -> Reset Safari and all is happy now

What I hate about the Internet is...having to select my credit card type

In case if you didn't know, you can determine the type of credit card, i.e., Visa, Master Card, Amex, and etc. by looking at the number you enter. The prefix and width (including spaces) for the major credit card types are:

CARD TYPES............PREFIX................WIDTH
American Express.....34, 37....................15
Diners Club..............300 to 305, 36........14
Carte Blanche...........38..........................14
Discover...................6011.......................16
EnRoute...................2014, 2149.............15
JCB..........................3............................16
JCB..........................2131, 1800..............15
Master Card.............51 to 55..................16
Visa..........................4...........................13, 16

Therefore, it stands to reason that by looking at the prefix of a credit card, you can derive the type of the card. And finally, as a programmer, I know that Verisign does not require you to send in the type, only the number itself and a few other bits of information.

What I hate about the Internet is...everyone wants you to create an account

It never fails...any website you shop on...they want you to create an account when you check out.

Why?

When I go to my local mall and buy something in my favorite shop, the store doesn't ask for my address, phone number, email address or any other personal information. Normal shopping experiences include an exchange of pleasantries with the sales person, handing over cash, debit, or credit card...and obtaining a receipt and walking away with the goods.

Why shouldn't shopping on the Internet be any different?

What I hate about the Internet is...

While messing around on the Internet, again...I realized I was obsessing over the useability of the Internet and websites I visit. Most of the thoughts are along the lines of what could be better about websites, what sucks about websites, and what's missing. Therefore, I'm going to (but no promises on how often I will update) create a new series of posts regarding these very thoughts.

For the one person who reads my blog somewhat consistently, stay tuned for the first post.

Network Printing and Canon PIXMA MX310

Purchased the Canon PIXMA MX310 all-in-one office printer tonight and the heat was on to get it to work for the MacBook over a wireless network. I have the DLINK DPR-1260 wireless router/booster/print server which does not have any support for Mac OS X. Therefore, turned to the CUPS drivers in the Gutenprint project. As it turns out, Gutenprint does not have the exact driver for the PIXMA MX310, but you can use the MP-150 driver.

To get everything working, I did the following:

1. Downloaded and installed the drivers
2. Went to Print & Fax setup and added a new printer
   
3. Selected HP Jet Direct - Socket for the Protocol
4. Entered the address: 192.168.x.xx:9100 (9100 is the port assigned by the DLINK print server)
5. Entered the queue name assigned by the DLINK print server
6. Selected Canon PIXMA MP150 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.2 in the Print Using box
   

Viola, I'm printing like a champ over the network from both our MacBook and PC system. Copying works great, faxing works great, but still have to figure out to get the scanner to work.

Experimental site navigation added to blog

Recently, I have become enamored with the concept of a "command line" interface. While, I wish I could take credit for the concept, I was quick to realize that before the OS UI, there were punch cards...the punch cards were good...but, quickly replaced by a terminal with a command line for telling computers what to do.

Anyway, I digress. With Mac OS X, the Spotlight application is my most favorite as it provides a command line interface for launching any application or searching for any document on my Mac. Furthermore, I found Enso from Humanized that provides similar functionality to my PC.

So, thinking about it some, what bothers me the most about web sites is the fact that you have to use a mouse to navigate them effectively. So, I figured bring the command line to the web site. The "kui navigation" is a beta navigation tool for websites (v. 0.000001...you get the point, it's very new and not tested at all) leveraging the DOM and Yahoo! AutoComplete GUI library. The result, is a command line that allows you to start typing the text of a hyperlink on the page and it will shortlist the matches based on the DOM which you can select to jump to the next page.

Get it? Give it a try, it's in the right navigation pane. Remember, no comments from the peanut gallery unless they are positive. I made no attempt to test outside of Firefox nor did I worry about duplicate links.

ZFS File System...now that's big

As I surfed the Internet tonight, came across an article about the ZFS File System. Not being familiar with it, I did a bit of reading to learn more, as that is what one may due when trying to learn.  Anyway, looking on WikiPedia, I found an interesting assertion that frankly, made my head hurt.

If a billion computers each filled a billion individual file systems per second, the time required to reach the limit of the overall system would be almost 1,000 times the estimated age of the universe.

Wow, not that's a lot of data.  Makes you wonder how much it really is...ok, maybe not.

Flight Status using Google SMS

Tonight, while reading through Lifehacker, came across a great post on checking flight status using Google SMS. Apparently, by sending a text message to Google SMS like "Southwest Flight 48", you will receive a message back with the status of the flight. As a frequent traveler, this is way cool.

Unable to open ".msg" files in Outlook

When receiving an email with another email message attached, i.e., with a .msg file extension, I was unable to open the attached email in Outlook. Apparently, this is a known issue with Google Desktop. To work around the issue until it's fixed, in Outlook 2003 goto Tools -> Options -> Other -> Advanced Options -> Add In Manager and deselect Google Desktop Search in Outlook.

Dirty Santa

While catching up on my news today, read an article from the Associated Press about a Microsoft Messenger Santa bot talked dirty to kids. The Santa bot allows kids to chat with Santa through MSN Live messenger about what they would like for Christmas. Apparently, by directing the conversation the right way, you could get Santa to talk dirty to you. For example:

One of the publication's writers replicated the chat Monday. After declining the writer's repeated invitations to eat pizza, a frustrated Santa burst out with, "You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else."

A Microsoft spokesman had the following comment about the bot:

Sohn said Santa's lewd comment was sparked by someone "pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn't supposed to do."

Now, if that isn't the response of a developer, I don't know what is.

Humanized.com...putting the human back into customer support

From an earlier post, I raved about Enso, a product produced by Humanized.com. If you haven't tried out Enso and you work on a PC, you have to. It makes working on the PC easy by killing the need for your computer mouse! I love it.

I have installed it on all of my PC based computers, including my work laptop. The other day, I had just restarted my laptop for the first time after installing Enso and much to my dismay, the application crashed. Not only did it crash, it opened a window telling me it crashed and asked to send the information to Humanized.com. I nearly dismissed the window and had all but un-installed the software when I thought, what the heck, I'll go ahead and submit the information.

Then, within a few hours of my submission, I received an email! Yes, an email, with a real person on the end of it. After picking up my jaw from the floor, I read the email.

Hello Kevin,

Sorry Enso crashed for you. Thanks for reporting the bug. Enso needs to have access to your "My Documents" directory, because it stores its "learn as open" targets in a directory inside that one. It looks like your "My Documents" directory is on a network share (also known as a file server). Is that the case? If so, then if the network share is unavailable at the time that Enso tries to start up, this kind of crash will be the result. Some users have reported that restarting the server which hosts the network share fixes the problem. You might ask your network administrator to try doing this. In the long run, we need to fix Enso so that it won't crash in this situation, but will just quietly keep trying to read the directory until the network share becomes available. In the meantime, I'm afraid there's not much that you can do about the problem. Changing "My Documents" to point at a local directory on your hard drive would fix it, but I understand that this might not be an option for you.

Once again, I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
xxx xxx, Humanized, Inc.

I replaced the person's name with "xxx xxx" to respect the employees privacy. But yes, there is a real explanation to why the software crashed! I have now reconfigured the program to point to a local directory on my laptop and thanks to the outstanding humanized support I got, I am one happy customer. Oh, by-the-way, did I mention that Enso is free? Or at least the beta product is free. I didn't realize that there was a commercial product available, but now that I just found that out, I'm marching over right now to purchase their non-beta product Enso Launcher.

When was the last email you received from Microsoft offering an explanation to why a Windows crashed and subsequently reported to Microsoft?