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Over the weekend a woman called into a radio talk show to complain that her “Linksys wireless connection” has disappeared.

Via Mashable:

Meet Jennifer, she had been unwittingly yoinking Wi-Fi for more than a year and a half when the gravy train ran out, after which she called into Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy radio show in a state of utter confusion.

Even as I chuckle to myself thinking about this woman, I am reminded of my many friends and family who rely upon me for various levels of technical support and the questions and confusion that often ensues.  But, none of it compares to this, truly priceless.

I think it’s the fact that she knows what she did and is still seeking some sort of solution from the Tech Guy.  Perhaps if she just said “oooooh, now I get it….” and hung up it wouldn’t be so funny to me.

School districts across the country are supplying students with laptops for students to use both at school and home.

Unfortunately, one school district has decided to use the laptops as a means of invading the privacy of the students and their families.  It is alleged that the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania , used the embedded camera as a way to monitor the behavior and activities of students.

According to TechNewsWorld:

What sparked the discovery was Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko’s assertion in early November that Harriton High School student Blake Robbins had been “engaging in improper behavior in his home,” the filing explains. Matsko allegedly used as evidence of that behavior a photograph taken by the webcam in Robbins’ computer.

Robbins’ father then confirmed with the school that the district had the ability to remotely activate the webcams in the laptops it gives its students. Documentation accompanying the laptops, the family charged, made no reference to that ability.

“As the laptops at issue were routinely used by students and family members while at home, it is believed and therefore averred that many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress,” the filing states.

The functionality to monitor computer use as discussed in this article is not unusual, and is well known to those who use their employer’s computers.  What makes unusual is the use of the webcam to capture images of the user, without prior notice,  whether or not the user is at the keyboard.

As I write this I keep looking at my own webcam staring at me.  I never use it, but can’t help but think what it could capture if someone had control over it…

The first residential treatment center in the US for Internet Addiction opened this summer outside of Seattle.

From the State Journal-Register:

The center, called ReSTART, is somewhat ironically located near Redmond, headquarters of Microsoft and a world center of the computer industry. It opened in July and for $14,000 offers a 45-day program intended to help people wean themselves from pathological computer use, which can include obsessive use of video games, texting, Facebook, eBay, Twitter and any other time-killers brought courtesy of technology.

Previously, I wrote a post “Screw hybrids, I wanna go electric“.

Well, I have changed my story…. Screw electric, gimme a BMW Hybrid.

With the power and performance of an M3 while sipping electrical current in the evening to recharge, now that’s what I want for my daily driving.

From Wired:

The EfficientDynamics is a 2+2 four-door hybrid that combines M Series performance with better fuel efficiency and less emissions than you see in many compacts. BMW performs this magic by marrying its ActiveHybrid technology with an extremely economical engine and excellent aerodynamics. The result is a concept car with a top speed governed at 155 mph and a zero-to-62 acceleration time of 4.8 seconds. More impressive, the car gets 62.2 mpg and emits a Prius-like 99 grams of CO2 per kilometer.

Check out this video of the design team discussing the vehicle:

One reason is that they are making this car…

… again.  That’s Chevrolet’s reincarnation of the 1969 Camaro. 

Mark Morford writes about it in today’s San Francisco Chronicle:

Behold this weird new Camaro. It is, in sum, exactly the wrong car at exactly the wrong time with exactly the wrong attitude attached to exactly the wrong hopeless hope for a return to a rather crude automotive golden era that never really existed in the first place.

Why does this car exist at all? No one seems quite sure. But it is, if you spend a moment in the various car blogs, all flavors of a dumb, guilty pleasure, hotly discussed and awaited like a giant extra-large triple-cheese quadruple-meat pizza, ever since GM introduced it as a crazy concept car back in one of those years Before All Hope Died.

Morford also asks why GM is resurrecting a muscle car from forty years ago instead of making this car:

That is a Pininfarina Bluecar put out by a French-Italian conglomerate named Pininfarina/Bolloré.  Check out their website.  And no, you can’t buy one in the USA yet. 

But Dude!  You can buy a Camaro!

Here’s a quick note to update my ongoing struggle to ensure that my Apple TV doesn’t fall out of usefulness before its time. As you may remember I posted several months ago a wishlist for Apple’s next Apple TV update. It included some of the obvious things like responsiveness, performance, and video playlists. Unfortunately, none of these luxuries were included in the last update.

Apple TV 2.3, however, does actually seem to address many of the issues I pointed out in my last Apple TV post. The remote actually elicits an almost immediate visual response from the unit. There aren’t quite so many moments where I’m asking myself, “did that button press register?” It still happens, but I would say it’s quite less frequent now.

Two great features have been added with this update: 3rd party remote control support and video playlists.

Video playlists: Now you can play uninterrupted video through all of your day’s video podcast subscriptions. You can also set a video playlist to last through your New Year’s Eve party. Just create a playlist of videos on either a shared library or on your Apple TV’s main linked and synced computer.

This feature is great because now you can play each of your 2 or 3 minute podcasts from your favorite sources back to back as you turn to jello on the couch after a long day of hard brain stuff. You can create channels based on content and sit, motionless until every last one of those suckers has played.

3rd Party Remotes: Let your inner couch potato rejoice. Finally you can assign 6 of those extra buttons on ANY remote control littering your coffee table to the 6 functions of that little white remote that came with your Apple TV. Just enter Settings, Remotes, and start pushing buttons. It doesn’t matter which button you push on whatever infrared remote you have, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the main function of the device the 3rd party remote came with, you can repurpose the button for your Apple TV.

One sad note, Boxee was wiped out. I no longer have access to Hulu, Comedy Central, MySpace TV, and Torrents. And from what I’ve read, it’s not re-installable at the moment. However, I’d venture that most Apple TV users will enjoy the new features enough to make the update worth it anyway. While the Boxee crew will likely be hard at work creating a new installer and have you back on the Internet TV IV before the DTs have a chance to give you dead ceiling baby nightmares.

Also, I’ve got a few Boxee invites, so let me know if you’re interested in the comments.

Have you ever been sitting at your desk with your laptop open, working away on your dual-monitor desktop setup and thoughtlessly tried to move your mouse from your desktop monitor straight over to your laptop? What about copying a URL to the clipboard of your laptop then jumped over to your desktop to try to paste it into an email? It doesn’t work, right?

Well now it can. Synergy is an open source project that allows you to do just that. Install it on your windows desktop and your MacBook, take a few minutes to configure it, and voila! You’ve just created the perfect dual monitor, multi-operating system desktop work environment. 

You can now seamlessly move your mouse monitor to monitor to laptop and copy from one operating system and paste into another.

In my own setup, I’ve connected the keyboard and mouse via bluetooth and the left-side monitor to the Windows XP box sitting under my desk, and the center monitor to the MacBook Pro. Running Synergy on the Windows box in server mode and client mode on the MacBook, I now have a fully integrated multi-monitor desktop and laptop combo.

For years I have believed that everyone should experience, at least once, a full fledged mushroom trip.   A 2006 study shows that the long term effects of such a trip are both profound and positive.

From Wired magazine:

For the 2006 study, Griffiths recruited 36 people who hadn’t previously taken the drug. Six were given a ritalin placebo, while the rest received 30 milligrams of pure psilocybin — a dose roughly equivalent to five grams of dried psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, though mushroom potency varies widely. Psilocybin works by activating serotonin receptors in the brain, though the precise neurological cascades have not yet been identified.

Volunteers took the dose under the guidance of two trained mentors, with the traditional laboratory setting scrapped in favor of a living room appointed with a comfortable couch, headphones and other spiritual journey aids.

At the time, the volunteers reported mystical experiences — typically described as a “sense of unity” — in which the confusion of the world and of competing value systems came together in a coherent whole. These were not described in recreational terms, but as profoundly meaningful spiritual events. Fourteen months later, over half reported substantial increases in life satisfaction and positive behavior, while no long-term negative effects were reported.

I just got off the phone with a rep at Clearwire. If I cancel my service, which has always been adequate with the exception of their upload speeds, it is going to cost me $180.

This brings me to my point. Why are we all so willing to accept a contract on services for technology that will outlast the usefulness of the technology? Since signing up with Clearwire their service has remained unchanged. My requirements of that service have changed immensely. But because of the inane promotional gimicks I was presented with, I signed away any rights I may have to demand that the service keep up with my demands.

Specifically, Clearwire has always claimed a 256kb/s upload speed. Not bad if all of your upstream traffic is related to requesting a web page or sending an email. But when you start using Flickr, Picasa, or, god forbid, YouTube, that trickle is woefully inadequate. But Clearwire doesn’t care. They got you to sign up for two years, idiot.

A quick search of the web gives me all kinds of blog posts where people realized only too late (Clearwire Sucks, Clearwire Over-billing, Clearwire contracts, Clearwire rip-off reports, Clearwire complaints, Clearwire contract oddities, Clearwire no-out contracts, transferring your Clearwire contract, cancelling Clearwire, Clearwire complaints, and of course Clearwire early termination. Those links should help their page ranking. Ha!) that they would have been better off signing up for month to month service at a higher cost. At least then they’d have a little leverage when they call up and ask for better service. Like, have you ever noticed that when you’re month to month with Comcast and you call up to cancel your service the month the intial promotional rate is about to expire, they’ll extend your promotional rate for another six months? And they’ll do this indefinitely because they don’t want to lose you as a customer.

Jerks like Clearwire and AT&T know that if they threaten you with a sizeable termination fee, you’ll just suffer through their ridiculously bad service due to the perceived cost. Even if the cost of the termination fee is less than what you will pay over the remainder of your contract.

I would love to get a new iPhone, but the idea of agreeing to stay with AT&T for two years, no matter what changes over time just to save the initial $200 cost of entry is really making me rethink. And I’ll bet you that’s what they’re trying to avoid. If they give me a no-brainer free phone, no activation fees, special introductory rate, I can turn off the little nagger in my brain that wants me to think about the full cost of the service. No brain, no pain, as they say.

I saw X at The Showbox on Monday night, and they sounded freaking fantastic. If you’d closed your eyes so as not to see how the band members have aged since they started out, you’d swear you had been transported to Los Angeles circa 1981 – complete with mosh pit. Not quite as crazy as the pits of the eighties that were well documented in The Unheard Music, but that’s understandable – their fan base has aged along with the band.

John and Exene sounded as great as they ever have – Like broken glass and gasoline.

Billy Zoom is sixty but he doesn’t look a day over 45.

DJ Bonebrake still makes crazy faces while he hits the drums really hard.

John looks his age, but he sings great. His voice is one of the greatest rock ‘n roll voices ever. At Monday’s show he must have sweat out about 2 gallons of water. I’ve never seen a guy sweat so much. It was pouring off him. When he shook his head, sweat went flying in all directions.

Billy never broke a sweat. Exene was cool… D.J. was lookin’ a little heated, but not like John.

They played most all of the greats, “Los Angeles, “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene,” “We’re Desperate,” “Adult Books,” “Soul Kitchen,” “In this House that I Call Home,” and “White Girl.”

For the second encore, John and Exene came out and did an acoustic version “See How We Are” that was very refreshing after getting bombarded for two hours of electric X turned up to eleven.

For those of you who missed this 31-year anniversary tour, the next best thing is to watch the videos on their website from their SXSW performance.

The videos are not of the everyday low-res YouTube variety. CRACKLE is more like YouTube on steroids. Check it out. You can switch to HD, and if you click on the rectangular box by the volume control, the video goes full screen.

X represents punk rock’s sensational past, and CRACKLE represents the future of internet video.