This might save you a few minutes of Googling. Here’s a direct link to a PPD file for a Brother HL-5250DN printer. Enjoy.
Monthly Archive for January, 2007
When I leave Google Reader running for a while, Firefox eventually enters some kind of crazy Javascript spin loop which eats 100% of one core until I kill the tab. This is an Intel-based OSX machine, and Firefox 2.0.0.1.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a solution?
Update: It seems like Google Toolbar might be the cuplrit. See this bug report for details. I’ll disable the toolbar and see how things go.
Update 2: Well that wasn’t it. I’m running no plugins at all now, and the problem persists. There must be some kind of bug in the Javascript interpreter.
I was catching up on the Chris Soghoian saga, and decided to read this letter to the TSA from his crack team of Stanford law-ninjas. Oh boy, is it a doozy!
If you’ve lost track of Chris’ story, it appears that despite the FBI dropping charges, the TSA is trying to fine him $11k. Jennifer Granick’s terrific letter raises the obvious questions, such as, “Why Chris and not Senator Chuck Schumer?” as well as my favorite, “What part of free speech confuses you, exactly?”
Ok I paraphrase, but you get the idea.
But getting to the point, my jaw dropped when I reached the penultimate page where — if I am not mistaken — Granick suggests that the TSA may not actually possess the authority to fine travelers:
… However, sections 44901-44907 only govern the conduct of the Department of Transportation, the aviation industry, and airports. We have seen no legal authority for the proposition that the TSA can create civil liability for individuals where Congress chose not to do so in sections 18 U.S.C. 1036 and 49 U.S.C. 46314. What statutes give TSA authority to penalize those not covered by the statutory authority under which they have been passed?
The TSA collected over $1M in fines during 2004 alone.
Connect to irc.freenode.org and join channel #mwsf2007 for live reporting of the event. There are currently 900+ people in the channel. Holy crap.
Larry Osterman asks, “Where do you go to get answers to your technical questions?”
I know it is going to seem like I’m picking on Larry or Microsoft, but I’m not. I want to use this opportunity to point out something remarkable about Google, and about the search biz in general.
Just about every comment on Larry’s post gives the same obvious answer, to which he responds, “…for those of you proposing “Google” as the generic answer, what happens when the answer isn’t on the search engines?
Here’s my answer (prepare yourself): If Google doesn’t turn up the answer, I believe with very high probability that an answer simply does not exist.
Here’s how I Google: I enter a minimal combination of fairly specific search terms (ie, “nvidia vista rotate”) and scan the first page of results. If I don’t see what I am looking for in the first page of hits, I try different search terms. Stop and think about that for a minute. Google is so good that I readily blame myself for poor results. I think, “Google can’t be wrong — I must be using it stupidly.”
When I’m forced to make more than a few search attempts, or to look past the first couple pages of results, I have high confidence that the information I am seeking does not exist on the web*.
You can’t buy trust like that. This is the insurmountable challenge facing all competing search engines: search is a solved problem.
*Note: Sometimes this is because I am attempting to ask a very hard question. More often, it’s because I’m asking a question so stupid that the web can’t be bothered to answer it.
I highly encourage folks to watch Lawrence Lessig’s entire talk at 23c3 — it’s rad.
At least do yourself the favor of listening to the last 8 minutes of the video where John Perry Barlow enters the frey. Both Lessig and Barlow agree that “17 year old kids” will always circumvent the DRM du-jour, but they go toe-to-toe on the efficacy of civil disobedience.
To Barlow, it’s simply a matter of time. If we merely continue to violate the DMCA, creating a sort of underground railroad for culture, today’s stodgy “rights holders” will eventually go to that big studio in the sky, and change will be inevitable.
Lessig’s position is that we don’t have 20 years to waste. As long as we allow the powers that be to write the script, we’ll be playing the part of “criminal” (and, surprise, we lose). Instead, if we generate a parallel universe of free culture we can lawfully supplant the current “consumer oriented” system.
Riveting stuff.
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