Best Hubris

I’ve often wondered about when and where all of the websites out there get their information.  I know that many bloggers talk about reading the news feeds and various other strategies that allow them to post quickly on relevant topics.  As a professional freelance writer and business consultant, I can pretty much pack every 10 minute block of my day with some activity that directly or indirectly makes me money or grows my business.  As such, I don’t find myself able to do the same kind of thing.  No matter, of course.  The world needs many types and flavors of information, and as it happens, those that I produce won’t be of the current events variety.

But, it was with some amusement that I read through my RSS feeds yesterday.  I hadn’t gotten to them in a while and they had built up to around 300 posts.  Now, some of you are scoffing because you get 300 posts an hour in your RSS feed, but as I mentioned above, I don’t keep that tight of pulse on the as it happens vein of the Internet.  So, I’m usually content to wander back by my favorite sources and read what is available when I drop by, even if it is a month old.  For some sites though, this proves to be inefficient, and for those sites I use RSS Feeds and the basic Google Newsreader.  In all, I subscribe to less than 20 feeds, some of which are not updated more than weekly, so generally, I can keep up.

Glary Utilities is Amazing, Revolutionary, Life Altering!

I generally just read my feeds from the Home section of Google Newsreader which means they appear in reverse chronological order (most recent first) with no consideration for which site they came from.  I like this because I’m looking for interesting content, not because I want to know what they are saying today over at Freelance Switch.  So, about the time I read my fourth or fifth post regarding Glary Utilities I started to wonder what was going on.

For those of you who do not know about Glary Utilities, let me say this, you should have it.  Glary Utilities is one of those software products that you try out because the fifty other similar products you have had on your computer system haven’t quite lived up to what you had hoped for when you installed them, so you are willing to try the other ones that sound good.  Glary Utilities is also one of those products that once you install it, you stop trying the other ones because the one you have does what you want. 

In this case, Glary Utilities is a set of system maintenance tools ranging from a disk cleaner (going further than deleting your recycle bin) to an uninstall manager (deleting everything, not just what the uninstall program was coded to get), a memory manger, and more.  The best part of Glary Utilities is its Registry Cleaner.  If your computer is sluggish or just seems to be doing random things all of the sudden, your first step should be to clean your registry.  There are a million products that do this, but there is one product that I trust enough to click Scan, and then click Repair without bothering to verify what it has come up with because it has never once let me down, and that product is Glary Utilities. 

Now, I’ve been using Glary Utilities since somewhere around mid-2007 and it has been around for a lot longer than that, so we aren’t talking about new and flashy.  So, it was odd to see this:

Now, I get that there is bound to be some overlap in the universe of the Internet and blogs, but these sites are not exactly the dark corners of the Internet known only to a precious few.  These are big sites that get read all over the place.  So it begs the question, Do these sites all get their raw news from the same location, and if so, should I be reading that instead?  Or, Do these sites crib off of each other a little bit, and if so, is there an originator site?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying anything here or accusing anyone of copying content, it just makes me wonder about the flow of information and where I, as a reader, fit in that flow.  Just for information sake, I did a quick search.  According to Google Blog Search, there were 458 blog postings with Glary Utilities between that post on 6-25-08 at Web Worker Daily to today (7-30-08).  I guess it was a good month for the guys at Glary.

By the way, if you are wondering, I checked and there is no news during that time, except a 7-18-08 update to version 2.6 which might explain the Lifehacker and MakeUseOf posts.

Good Information Websites

Incidentally, if you are wondering, these websites are some of the best places for information on the Internet in their respective topics.

WebWorkerDaily is a resource for, well… people who work using the web.  It’s great for freelancers and the work from home.

MakeUseOf is a resource for all the bagillions of services, utilities, and programs out there on the Internet.  When I need something, I always check their directory to get sort of a a top 5 or top 10 list of sites I want to check out.

Lifehacker is a resource for “doing stuff”   I will warn you that Lifehacker is a bit of an everything for everyone type place, so there will be a TON of stuff you don’t care about mixed in with the absolute gems that you do care about.  They also have a big fat crush on the whole Getting Things Done paradigm.  I recommend subscribing to their feed.  That way, you can read the headline and just hit NEXT if it doesn’t apply to you.  Then, click into the actual articles you want to read

I was on Netflix today picking out my next movie.  I have the one-at-a-time plan because, frankly, it can take me two or three weeks to get around to watching a movie, no matter how much I want to see it.

Anyway, as I was scrolling through the movie that have come out in the last three months I came across the Paris Hilton movie called The Hottie and the Nottie.  Which from everything I heard was just as vile as you might expect from a movie starring Paris Hilton and with that title.  It was rated 1 1/2 stars.  It occurred to me that the rating is probably artificially high for that film.  Think about it, if you are someone like me, there is no way you are ever going to watch the Hottie or the Nottie unless you are on a transatlantic flight and your laptop dies, and your MP3 player, and the person in the seat next to you you, and your crossword puzzles disintegrate, and well, you get the idea.

What that means, is that I will also never rate the movie.  After all, it isn’t fair to rate a movie based on what I’ve heard about it.  So, the Paris Hilton movie will never get its well deserved one star rating from me.  In fact, it will never get that one star rating from millions of other Americans who will never bother to see the movie.  The only people who will rate it are either: a) losers who can’t find the Paris Hilton sex tape online and are using this film as a proxy, or b) people who actually like Paris Hilton and are willing to give her a chance as an actress and therefore are more likely than your average person to rate the movie higher.

This logic can actually be extended to a lot of movies.  A right-wing conservative will likely never see a Michael Moore film.  Now, they might rate is badly just as a principal vote, but assuming one only rates movies they actually see, then the Michael Moore movies will be rated higher than they actually should be because the people who do see the movie are more likely than the average to like the movie’s political slant.

It would seem that the only movies capable of getting a legitimate rating would be big mass-marketed blockbusters.  These films get seen across the spectrum by a big enough variety of people that one can assume that the rating for something like Spider Man 3 accurately reflects the opinion of the masses.  This is disturbing because I didn’t really like Spider Man 1 all that much, I disliked Spider Man 2, and I loathed Spider Man 3.  We get it, the kid who becomes Spider Man is a giant whiner.  Can we please move on?

Thus, like it or not, the most accurate ratings actually come from movie critics who, by profession, see all the movies whether they are of interest to them from a topic or starring actor standpoint.  While it would be foolish to put your movie going experience in their hands (I did like both the Mummy, and the Mummy Returns.  I get that they are not a subtle commentary on the fragile nature of the human condition, but they were fun.) it does appear that the sum total of their opinion would be more likely to reflect a movie’s actual merits rather than the summation of opinions of those who chose to see the movie, and therefore, attended with a favorable slant to start with.  I guess this makes those movies that do get low ratings all that more loathsome.  For while a Meryl Streep tear-jerker may benefit from higher ratings because only those who like such films will see it, a movie like the Hottie or the Nottie apparently cannot even reap the rewards of those who tried to like it.  Maybe there is some justice, at least at the bottom of the scale.

I’ll have to ponder this further to find how to best determine whether a movie is good, and more importantly whether I will like it or not.  Netflix recommends movies, but I believe its system is junk.  There is apparently a contest for $1,000,000 if you can improve on the system by 10%.  Frankly, I could do it blindfolded except for the fact that it must be a mathematical model based on a data set, and not on things like taking into account that people who like Michael Bay action movies but not Jason Statham action movies would be more or less likely to enjoy a Jason Bourne movie.  Oh well.  Perhaps there is a way to mathematically code such information.  I’ll get back to you and let you know (assuming I can’t win the million with my idea, in which case, you can read about it.)

Wired Magazine published a particularly fawning article in its May issue regarding Steve Jobs and Apple Computer.  The article concluded that Apple was “evil” for being closed in its development of various products and the way it locks both companies and users either into or out of its products.  Far from showing how this model has been (or will prove to be) devastating to Apple, the article seems to praise Apple.

It is no surprise then to find out that the article was written by the man who wrote a ghost blog from “Steve Jobs’ Mind” and then published a book.  No doubt, Steve Jobs is the author’s bread and butter, but in the long run perhaps it would be better to keep one’s credibility instead of pumping up a dubious quality CEO.

The article notes that Mr. Jobs was brought back to Apple to turn around the lagging computer maker. The article gives him full marks for doing so noting that market share has doubled to 6%.  Like I told a manager who tried to pass off an insulting raise by couching it in percentages, 25% more than nothing is still nothing.  I mean, golly gee whiz shucks, a WHOLE 6%!  Wow!  Honestly, if Google released a new computer architecture tomorrow, it would have a 6% market share by year end.  Are we seriously giving a man credit for getting up to 6% market share over a dozen years?

The Firefox browser was released as version 1.0 (though there were several pre-1.0 releases) in November of 2004.  As of June 2008, it has a 19% market share against Microsoft (and others). In other words, in less than four years, Firefox has managed to grow to nearly one-fifth of the market without the help of ubiquitous television ads.  In contrast, Steve Jobs was re-made CEO of Apple in 1997 and in over 10 years has managed to lead the company to a whopping 6% share.  Excuse me if I don’t share the enthusiasm for this level of leadership.

The article, in order to avoid being even more laughable that it is, plays up Apple’s success in the iPod and iPhone.  No one can deny the success there.  However, it would be more accurate to describe Mr. Jobs as having failed miserably at the stated goal of “bringing Apple back.”  However, it is true that Mr. Jobs did a fantastic job of starting a completely new gadget company.

iPod and iPhone Future or Future Kitsch?

Although both the iPod and iPhone have succeeded over the short term despite their secretive locked in strategy, will that translate into long term success?  Even now, other players in the phone industry are developing newer better phones.  Granted, they still lag the iPhone, but without the lead gained from the surprise attack, are they really that good?  Check any forum you want to see the rampant grumbling about being force to use AT & T Wireless.  When the inevitable day arrives when another phone that is almost as good, but half the price of the iPhone arrives where will the market share head then?

For the answer, look no further than Apple’s computers.  Apple’s operating system is almost universally hailed as being far superior to Windows in every way.  And yet, despite a constant flood of TV advertising, Apple languishes as a far distant also-ran.  Why?  The very secrecy and closed market philosophy the magazine applauds is the answer. 

Maybe Apple is better, but when for the same price you can get a lightweight laptop AND a power laptop from any number of Windows systems manufacturers, does the average Joe decided to buy Apple?  Without the likes of Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, and hundreds of other manufacturers pushing the limits of features and price, Apple computers are WAY more expensive.  Sure, there are benefits, but when your checkbook is out, are those benefits worth $1,000 or more?  Especially when you know that in just three to four years, both systems will be on their way to obsolete town?

Even today, there are the rumblings of the coming storm.  iTunes is praised for holding the line at 99 cents per song, and justifiably so, but is that it?  Sure, it integrates tightly with iPod, but with nothing else.  To top it off, iTunes insists on installing and frequently updating QuickTime which no one uses!  In fact, yours truly got so fed up with iTunes earlier this year that I used Glary Utilities to delete it AND its cursed QuickTime.  Why?

I don’t have an Apple computer, which means I can afford to have both a laptop (for portability) and a desktop (for power and 22” widescreen monitor).  So, I want to be able to plug my iPod into both computers depending on if I am home or not.  But iTunes won’t allow it!  The closed structure insists that I use one computer as the “main” computer regardless of how I actually use my systems.

I get that there are rights issues here, but even the songs that I did not buy through Apple can’t be synced between systems.  The result?  A single hour of Internet research, and a day or two of software testing, and now I use my iPod with Media Monkey on two systems and iTunes is installed on neither.

My phone is through Sprint thanks to their SERO program which gives me unlimited data (and plenty of voice) for just $30 a month.  No amount of Apple cool-ness is worth me shelling out somewhere over $100 per month in addition to whatever I would have to pay for an iPhone.  I may or may not be in the minority today, but as the phone providers (who are much better at making good phones with good features than Microsoft is at doing the same with operating systems) catch up to where it those extra goodies that Apple’s iPhone possesses, there will be more and more users who think, “Yeah, but I don’t really need that.”

When that day comes, Apple’s iPhones and iPods will drift back to where their computers are.  Beloved by a devoted but small group of fans, and not seriously considered by the rest of us.

Way to miss the boat, Wired.

After a TON of consternation and A LOT of crappy information out on the Internet, I think I have finally solved a wireless networking issue that has been the bane of my home network for too long.

Help My Wireless Network Keeps Disconnecting

You’ll see those words or some just like them on message boards and forums all over the Internet as the home based network administrator struggles to find a solution to a seemingly bizarre. Wireless network issue.  Often they will blame Windows or Windows XP or Vista too.  They are kind-of-sort-of right, but not really.

If you read the answers, you’ll find a wide assortment of pseudo-experts throwing out impressive sounding, but utterly useless answers.  The typical exchange starts out with the “network pro” suggesting something mind numbingly simple that all but the most naive computer user has probably already tried.  Change the channel, or make sure you have the same WEP passwords on all your computers, or the most common of all, update your drivers.  Folks, update your drivers is a throw away answer that does not come close to troubleshooting the issue.  This is what people at help desks tell people who call in because they hope that it will somehow solve the problem without having to do any actual work.  Yes, you should update your drivers, but this should never be any serious person’s full answer.

It’s The Windows XP Browser

No, really…Well, sort of.  I know a lot about the answers to people who ask about intermittent wireless network dropping because it was the exact same problem I was having.  After looking for an answer long enough I found out that it happens to all kinds of wireless network cards whether Intel, Linksys, Netgear, D-link, Trendnet, you name it.  Depending on where you looked though, that was one of the places the blame was pointed.  “Oh, Netgear sucks, get a real router.”  Some people even insisted matching up hardware, “Oh, you can’t use a Netgear card with a Linksys router.”  And some people even insisted that you can’t use USB wireless adapters.  No, no, no.

Here is the deal.  I have one desktop PC running Windows XP Pro.  It’s a sweet machine.  Then, I have two laptops that are a few years old, but perfectly good for what we use them for.  They are Dell Inspiron 600m with Intel 2200/BG wireless built into them.  The desktop has a D-link USB adapter and the wireless router is a Trendnet.  Ironically, the reason I bought the Trendnet was a seemed to be having some problems with my Netgear one.

All the computers connected just fine to the wireless network, so it isn’t some dumb thing like mismatched passwords.  The problem is they would sometimes drop off the network.  It seemed like it was random.  Sometimes, I would go hours with no issue, other times it seemed like I was getting disconnected every few minutes.  I tried everything.  I updated the drivers.  I updated the router firmware.  I changed from WEP to WPA to WPA2.  I tried Windows Zero Configuration Wireless utility.  I tried the Intel Wireless manager.  I tried the D-link wireless manager, and every combination of the three.  Nothing seemed to work.

Then, one day, I got what would turn out to be my big break.  One evening, I had been working on my desktop computer when my wife joined me and turned on her laptop computer.  Bam!  I was off the network.  I didn’t think anything of it.  I reset my connection.  Then, I heard a big sigh from my wife.  When I asked, she had just been kicked off the network.  Shortly thereafter I caught a bigger break when my Event Viewer logged a network disconnect and a browser election event at the exact same time.  Yes!  The problem is the computer browser. 

Unfortunately, as I searched the Internet with my new keywords, I found out that it didn’t make a difference.  The same half-helpful ding dongs answering the wireless connection drops questions were the ones answering the computer browser makes the wireless connection drop questions.  The answer was always, “What kind of router/card,” followed by “More details/Log files” followed by “Maybe it’s your cordless phone” and ultimately either “Buy a new router/card” or nothing, the thread would just end.  Truth is, the person sounding like the expert probably never had a clue what could possibly be the issue.

Broadcasts and Networks

The answer finally came in, of all places, a Facebook forum.  Turns out the real administrators from Facebook actually help out their users by really trying to understand their problems.  After all, people might just decide to stop using Facebook before they decide to buy a new router.

I don’t remember the question or the exact answer, and I can’t seem to find it anymore, but it came down to this.  If you are running Windows (any kind of Windows) in a small home wireless network you might have this connection dropping issue.  Why?

Every so often, your Windows computer will for whatever reason want a browse list.  The browse list is nothing more than a way to find computers on a network by name.  It is woefully outdated and nobody with a serious network uses it (quite frankly, they probably block it at every router).  But, it works great for the small home network because it takes no setup.

The way it works is that whenever you turn on a computer, once it gets on the network it sends a broadcast out onto the network asking for the browse list.  Normal network traffic has a destination.  But in order to have a destination, you need to know where the other computers are.  A broadcast solves this Catch-22 by being sent to everybody.  Think of a five-year old in a crowded room looking for their mother, “Mom?  Mom?  Mom?”  Everyone in the room can hear him calling out for his mother even though the message is not meant for them.  A broadcast works the same way.

Now, in order for this to work, there has to be just one list that gets updated, otherwise there might be discrepancies between the lists.  To achieve this goal, the computers hold a Browser Election.  Basically, if a computer want to have the master list, it has to be the master browser.  There is an algorithm on how this election gets one, but the important thing is that it all happens by broadcasts.

Ok, here comes the glitch.  If you have a small area wireless network, then it is possible that all of the computers will receive the broadcast at the same time, and they will all respond at the same time.  This has a technical term, I don’t know it.  When this happens, the wireless router won’t hear everyone properly.  (Think about five kids shouting for mom).  The router will either respond incorrectly, or not at all to one or more of the computers.  This computer will wait for the proper response before it sends any more network traffic.  This is why the connection does not show up in the icon as disconnected.  It isn’t really.  It is just that it will wait literally forever before it sends any other traffic for that proper response.  Since the router thinks it already responded (or didn’t know it needed to respond), no signal will ever be sent, and BOOM, your connection is dropped.

If you have a big house, the difference in signal between your master bedroom and the kitchen is probably enough to keep this from happening.  But, I live in a bungalow style house and my wife and I often share the same room, so the distance from router to computer isn’t far and the computers are even closer together than that.  I’m sure there is a ratio of some sort here where if you are too close or too far you’ll never have a problem which is why no one ever believes the people who do have the issue.

Advanced Router Settings

There is a fix!  First off, if you do have Intel 2200BG wireless adapters you do need to get new drivers if you still have the original ones.  The way you can tell if you need new drivers is if they allow you to chose WPA-2 with AES or not.  If they only allow you to choose WEP or WPA with TKIP, they are too old.  Otherwise, if all your equipment allows for WPA-2 with AES, then you should be ready.

Log into your wireless router and look for the advanced settings.  It might be called something different, but basically you are looking for where you get to put numbers into certain parameters, not where you get to put your password or SSID or anything like that.

You may not have all these settings.  That might be a problem, and it might not.  Change what you can and see if it helps. 

Most wireless routers come pre-configured by default with their ideal settings for a perfect environment.  And why not?  Always hope for the best.  If your wireless network keeps dropping then you are looking to tweak some of these settings.  Yes, they will technically slow down your wireless network, but I will bet you that you only rarely consume your full bandwidth anyway, especially if you mainly use your wireless to share an Internet connection and a printer or two.  (Your Internet connection is way slower than your wireless.  My Comcast Internet with one step upgrade is something like 7 Mb/sec.  The wireless goes at 54 Mb/sec so even if I lost 3 Mb/sec off the wireless I’d still be fine.)  Besides, what is worse, a connection that keeps dropping or one that is a teeny tiny bit slower?

The settings you want to tweak are the fragmentation threshold and the RTS number (they might be called something slightly different, but you should be able to tell them.)  The fragmentation usually comes set at 2346.  Drop it to 2306.  The RTS usually comes at 2347.  Drop it to 2304.  If it works, then here is your virtual high-five.

If not, then lower the Beacon (usually set at 100) to 50.

Still doesn’t work.   Go to your computers and look at the card’s configuration.  If it lets you choose between RTS and CTS, choose RTS.  Otherwise, the RTS changes at the router will just be ignored.

If you still don’t have it, make sure that you actually have the same issue.  Here is a summary of the symptoms:

• All computers can and do connect to the wireless when first started.
• When the connection drops it is seemingly random, that is it doesn’t always drop when you do a specific thing.
• It isn’t just the one computer that drops.  If you have this problem, then all of your computers should be just as likely to drop as another one.
• You don’t have other errors in Event Viewer (except for browser, live update, automatic update, etc…)

If so, then try adjusting the settings down a little bit at a time.  These numbers make big changes for small values, so start with something like 10 less for the fragmentation and the RTS and something like 2 or 3 less for the beacon.  Also, always keep the RTS exactly two lower than the fragmentation.  If you get down to 1800 or something, you are barking up the wrong tree.  Sorry.

Good luck.  I hope this helps.