Chilled Out Bearded Man

Years ago, I used to type in a search engine url, load that page, type my search into the input field, and click submit. That was years ago…

Nowadays, like I’m sure most of my compatriots do, I just type my searches straight into my browser. Since my search is obviously not a URL, I get redirected to the search engine results using the search engine set as the default keywords service in my browser. That stopped working for me recently. Now, instead of the URL redirecting to Google as my Firefox is set to do, it was instead redirecting to … searchresults . rcn . com.

It finally got on my nerves today and I decided to search for a solution. At first I found this article titled RCN Hijacking Mistyped URLs by Ed Hayes which recommended calling RCN as he had done. I didn’t want to call them, so I spent a few more minutes searching for another solution. Nothing else was really showing in google search results for this problem.

Then I discovered a link at the bottom of the RCN Yahoo search results page called Search Settings. Clicking this link brings you to a page that says:

About the Search Results Page

The search results on the prior page were provided to you because you entered keywords or an improperly formatted, currently unavailable, or nonexistent domain name into the address bar. This service is designed to enhance your web surfing experience.No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.

•  Would you like to opt out of this service?

If you would like to Opt Out of this service, please click here.

When I clicked on that link I was taken to a page that said the following:

Search Service Settings

OPT-IN Opt In  (Recommended) OR OPT-OUT Altavista TM AOL ® Ask.com TM Google TM Bing TM Yahoo ® None — DNS Error Page

Note: In order for opt-out to work properly, you need to accept a “cookie” indicating that you have opted out of this service. If you use a program that removes cookies, you will have to repeat this opt-out process when the cookie is deleted. The cookie placed on your computer will contain the site name: “.searchresults.rcn.com”.

I selected Google rather than a DNS error page, and was shown the final page of the opt out process.

SETTINGS CHANGED

Your preferences have been set, and will not have to be changed again as long as your browser cookies remain intact. If you would like to change your settings in the future, simply visit optin.searchresults.rcn.com.

If you select DNS error page, you get this result when you type an incorrect url or non-url:

http://www17.searchresults.rcn.com/not_found

This is actually problematic because it is a valid URL, so the browser gets confused and thinks it has found the valid URL you were looking for. They have in effect hijacked your ability to control what to do with an unresolvable URL. You can either opt in to use their custom Yahoo RCN search page, or else choose from one of their other choices. You are not given the choice to use the settings in your browser. It is not a true opt-out. In fact, as stated a few paragraphs above in the italics from their page, it says that you actually need to accept a cookie that in effect opts you in to their opt out system. Very backwards if you ask me.

You can read more about the browser Location Bar Search and how Firefox resolves unresolvable URLs and keyword searches here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_Search

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyword.URL

I wonder if the Search Settings was available to Ed on the Yahoo RCN search page when he was dealing with this problem a few months back or if RCN got wise and added this solution once they started getting a bunch of complaints. Either way, hope that helps people. And perhaps RCN can make a real Opt Out option that would allow our browsers to do the URL resolving. ISPs should be giving us an http error result, not a valid url result saying that it failed.

Don't bee caught unprepared

This is in response to a post by Meg Pickard and will make more sense if you read her article first.

I actually had a similar experience a few years back when I was staying in downtown Chicago at a cheap ($100 per night) hotel. The place was not shiny new, but it also was not a dirty old dump. It just looked like an older place that had been kept up well.

I foolishly went to bed wearing only my boxer shorts and a t-shirt. I awoke to find a bite in a place you don’t want to be bitten. My first instinct was that it was a spider or mosquito, but there was a lingering thought that maybe it was something else. When I returned to my hotel room later in the day, I discovered the red brown bug on the edge of my bed.

Based on where I had been bitten, I jumped to the conclusion that it was crabs – not knowing that crabs were way way smaller. I actually looked up crabs on the internet and they look just like the bug that was on my bed. Now I know that they could not have been crabs for many obvious reasons. And I think Meg finally solved my pickle as to what it was. Luckily, I don’t think I brought any of the bugs back home with me.

I want to recommend a tool for traveling. My hostel jumping friend told me about it.

Fold a bed sheet in half the long way. Stitch the long end and one short end closed. Now you have a lightweight protective sleeping bag. For extra credit you can get a longer bedsheet and add a place to put your pillow, so that you don’t need to carry a pillow case with you when you travel.

Thanks to Meg Pickard for reminding me about this. I hope our experiences can be a lesson to you other travelers out there.

I just read a short article on The Next Web (http://thenextweb.com/europe/2009/10/18/pirate-party-leader-threatened-burnt-stake/)about Sweden’s Pirate Party in the European Union. Here were a few very interesting points they summarized which made a lot of sense to me:

* Deep Packet Inspection and any other methods of ‘looking inside’ the data being transmitted by individuals is wrong, just like it’s illegal to intercept mail in the postal service.
* ISPs should be immune from prosecution for what’s sent through their networks, just like the postal service isn’t prosecuted for moving illegal drugs.
* Individuals have a right to privacy online and offline
* Copyright should only apply to commercial work – bedroom remixers and mashup artists shouldn’t have to ask permission to release their work unless they want to charge for it.
* Finally, and most controversially, copyright on any song, film or any other creative work should be just five years. That would mean artists would only be able to earn a living from their music for five years before the song became public property.

I definitely agree that the last one is controversial, but I have heard similar points from GNU creator, Richard Stallman: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html. His point is that a copyright is a monopoly given to a writer,etc with the intent of promoting innovation. Having long copyrights is counter to the purpose of the law, and he claims, counter to the constitution. I still do not have enough knowledge about this subject to form a strong opinion, so I will leave it at that.

The sun came out finally where I live, which might explain why I have been running into old friends at a shocking rate lately. These are all friends I have not seen in at least four years. Its a pleasant experience each time it happens.

Which got me thinking about what Facebook is doing to this sort of encounter.

Facebook completely changes the dynamic similarly to how other technologies changed the system in the past.  When airplanes came out the world suddenly got smaller. You were able (if you could afford it) to travel thousands of miles in hours instead of days.  This meant that you could see your family on a regular basis even though you lived far away.

The telephone did for communication what the airplane did for transportation. Now you could instantatenously communicate with distant friends and family at a whim.

Star Trek Borg

But even with these technologies, there was still room for a wonderful phenomenon – reconnection. When you are far away you lose touch with certain friends or family. Then, when you see each other again, you experience a moment of extreme satisfaction. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.” Sometimes time apart is good for the soul. It lets you breathe and it lets your brain reorganize localized events into your more globalized memory quadrants (I’m not a “brain” scientist), making the memories seem smaller but more important as a part of your precious past.

What is Facebook doing to the art of reconnection? We never lose touch with friends on Facebook. Their events are popping up on a daily basis. We scan through faces occasionally, almost as a game. We read our friends conversations with eachother.

Does Facebook leave us room to fall out of touch? Do we get to forget about friends for awhile and then to reconnect in a burst of remembering pleasure? I would say yes. Hal Niedzviecki (Author of The Peep Diaries) tells a story about throwing a Facebook party for all of his hundreds of Facebook friends. He received quite a few confirmations for his event, but only one person attended the party. This example and similar stories and experiences lead me to believe that there is still room for losing touch with friends.

Twitter is a quicker more constant ongoing conversation than Facebook, so you might think it completely removes the falling out of touch experience. But Twitter seems to be for constant communication with closer friends, or for “following” people you don’t necessarily want to have a two way conversation with. If I read all of Guy Kawasaki’s tweets I wouldn’t have time to read anything else and I would have to sleep far less than I do now.

So I would say that we are not in danger of staying in touch too much. We can only have actual communication with a limited number of people. We can still fall out of communication with friends even if we are electronically linked.

What will the next generation bring? Thats another question. Will we slowly move toward a Borg society, always connected, never losing touch with anyone? Will cell phones merge with Twitter and will our brains get integrated into Google’s Wave?

And also, how important is reconnection? Maybe we could do without it after all.

Dear RCN,

I am writing to you in the hopes that you will improve yourself.

Your billing system is preposterous. Every month when I check the bill, I worry what new surprises I will find. When my bill increased recently, I tried to figure out where the difference was, but the actual names of the line items had changed. How am I supposed to read my bill every month if the names of the line items are changing?

The question of line item names should really be nonexistent because you offer 3 services that consumers care about:
1) Cable
2) Internet
3) Phone

When I used to get bills from your competitor Time Warner, I had 3 line items:
1) Cable
2) Internet
3) Phone

Do you see how nicely the line items match the services above? That’s how your bill needs to be. We don’t want to see that we are paying for a cable box. We know we have to pay for a box, because there can be no cable without a box. Include the Cable Modem in my price. I can’t have internet without it. The Bundle Discount is meaningless. Show me the bundle as an item and somewhere on your site show me what’s in it. That’s all you need.

In fact, you don’t even need to show me those 3 line items. You should just create packages and have the elements of the package on your website and in your brochures. Then have one line item on the bill.

You are wasting time and money by dealing with all of these line items on your bills. It takes me at least twice as long with one of your customer service people as with Time Warner customer service, because we have to walk through all the line items when I call RCN. When your sales people are trying to sell me a new “package” (bundle, etc) it takes them way too long to figure out and explain the offerings.

Lastly, I would like to bring up my price increase. The increase this year was almost $40 in two months. It was an increase on multiple products, but you have to be kidding me if you think I am going to just accept a $40 increase on a $157 bill. That is a 25% increase.

The short of it is that I will most likely be leaving your service, because your customer support did not seem to understand my situation. In fact they asked if I wanted to remove some of my services. (I may be mistaken, but I believe that will cost me $5 based on many articles I have read. I forgot to ask.) No, I don’t want to remove my services. I want the services, I just want your company to have some sanity about their annual price increases. A 25% increase is unacceptable.

This is by far the worst increase I have seen, but billing failures seem to be a regular event at your company, probably due to the inanely complex billing system. I deal with some sort of RCN billing error one to two times per year. That is one to two times more than it should be.
Make some packages and let me choose one. Show me 1-3 line items on my bill. Then I will stay with your company. I am done playing this ridiculous pricing game. I deserve better as a consumer of a company of your size and stature.

Best Regards,

The Chilled Out Bearded Man

P.S. In case you are wondering, I left Time Warner because I moved to a location that did not offer Time Warner. But, there are other choices and I believe Time Warner may be available to me now.

First Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett… Now this.
http://consumerist.com/5303716/billy-mays-likely-died-of-heart-disease

I wrote about him recently, but I meant no harm. If you believe in curses, I’m sorry.

http://www.chilledoutbeardedman.com/2009/02/02/retarded-oxy-clean-guy/

Sad to see a bearded man go, even though I didn’t see eye to eye with him.

Wolfram Alpha has Add-ons for their search. The add-ons come in many different flavors, from a FireFox addon to a Windows start bar search to an iGoogle gadget. An iGoogle Gadget? Aren’t Wolfram and Google enemies?

Its pretty cool that there seems to be comfortable interaction between Google and Wolfram Alpha.

This is probably a smart move considering that they could potentially end up in the same niche market in the future. Friendly competition is just so much more pleasant than all out rivalry. We could also see Wolfram get bought out by Google if the product proves its worth and Mr. Wolfram finds himself in need of a gadzillion dollars (unlikely considering that he has many other successful products on the market including the famous Mathematica).

Then the big question becomes, how does Wolfram Alpha monetize this type of search? Why would you want to click through to a website for info on a product when all you are looking for is the answer to a question? In Google you are looking for websites and ads are just another website that happens to be paid for. Perhaps Google/Doubleclick with their advertising genius will be able to help Mr. Wolfram find the answer to this advertising conundrum.

Or maybe Mr Wolfram should just install his addon and ask Wolfram Alpha:

How can Wolfram Alpha make money off of Wolfram Alpha?

Because regardless of how amazing a product is, if it can’t make money its survival comes into question.

Dowload the addons here:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/downloads.html

(I’m sure Mr Wolfram already thought of all of this. I hear he’s really smart.)

Microsoft’s Bing Website doesn’t have an RSS feed, only Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter seem to be outshining plain old blogs as a source of basic information. I doubt the blog will die anytime soon, but perhaps we’re seeing the beginning of the end for blogs.

Just by chance, Chilled Out Bearded Man joined Twitter today. Perhaps its time to join Facebook, as well. We’ll see how long that lasts, as rumor has it that alternate personalities are removed from Facebook (without notice) if they get too much attention. Might test this soon.

Alright… I didn’t make him. But I knew him before he was what he is today. Don Hertzfeld was just a plain old dull pencil like the rest of us. From the moment we were placed in the same class, I knew that Don Hertzfeld would be something special – a step up from me – better at making things clearer. After years of honing, the sharp Don that you know and love was finally created. He went from being a standard number two to number one in the class. I had been number one, but he erased me, plain and simple. He just wiped me right off the board. My remains were left outside with the other rocks to fend for myself. Don would stare out the window now and again to check on me, but I had known from the day he came into that class that he would be the teacher’s pet. I knew that, because I was at the head of the class and he was merely writing on a boring desk. But I liked him. I really did. Everyday was a new day for Don. Everyday he would come in a little sharper, a little more prepared for the day’s work. And everyday, I felt a little more worn down, a little shorter and with less to give. One day, first thing in the morning, Don came running into the room. Someone tripped and sent Don flying four feet through the air. He landed below me sprawled out like a tree with no branches. Someone could have been injured pretty badly, but alas, all eyes were spared from such a disaster. He was lucky to still be in one piece after a fall like that. But I knew that was the end for me. I had been worn down to nothingness. That day, Don was picked up. He was looking extra sharp in his yellow suit. I knew that my position at the head of the class was over. I stepped aside – or I should say I was wiped aside - my remnants thrown out to the dogs and Don took his rightful position as the lead of the class. His taste was very stylized. His descriptions of things were impeccable. A part of me was still in that class, but mostly, I had been blown to the wind. What remained of me faded away slowly. Don Hertzfeld, the sharpest pencil in town, took my job.

I know this story makes no sense whatsolutely. But sometimes, thats the point. What’s the point? Don’s the point. He uses points to draw points with points. You probably get it by now. The end will come, even for Don the pencil. Come back next to see Don reach his end, as the shiny Ben Pic roles his way past Don.

I have never understood what people mean when they say that a genius is a person who knows the answer and just needs to figure out how to get to it. The most common example is the fact that Einstein calculated the equation for relativity and got the correct answer even though when people reviewed the calculations they discovered errors. Once they corrected the errors, his answer was still correct.

What is a successful businessman? A good business man is a man with goals. He knows what he wants to achieve. Whether his intentions are good or evil, he would be considered a successful business man if he sets out a goal and achieves it.

In life, we are all wondering what our purpose is. The geniuses understand. They have some end goal that they know to work towards. Sometimes they might not understand the road to get there, but that is not a problem as long as they have ambition and perseverence. They already know the answer. They only need to get to it.

Its like walking down a road. If you know your final destination, you can reach it. If you don’t have a destination that you are heading towards, then there is no way for you to get there. This is because “there” is nowhere unless it is somewhere. So you must set yourself goals. Finding the road to reach the goals is the pleasure of living life with meaning. (What is the meaning of life, you ask?)

And what about all those people who set out to achieve a goal and failed? Weren’t their lives miserable? No. They felt alive each and every day they spent trying to achieve that goal. They toiled and tortured themselves, but there was a constant “light at the end of the tunnel”.

All of the people who had a goal were happy, but what of those of us who have no goal? We don’t know our purpose. We feel lost. We have no direction.

Well, if you were sitting in the desert and you felt lost, what would you do? Would you sit in one place and let yourself die? No! You would choose a direction and start walking. And if you hit a dead end, you would choose another direction and walk some more. You choose a direction and you go.

We must all choose a direction. If we know the destination, then it will be that much easier to choose a direction. If we do not know the destination, if we do not have an obvious goal, then we must make choices and push in a direction.

Many of us allow the road to be chosen for us. We believe that fate will choose our direction. If we leave many doors open, then life will close the unwanted doors for us, we think to ourselves. But I beg to differ. “Life” does not know what doors are correct. “Life” is not an intelligent mind like a human mind. “Life” is a way of saying that we are animate beings. And we are animate beings with intelligence. “Life” does not control. “Life is” as they say “what we make of it”.

We are intelligent. We must use our intelligence to choose a path. And when our intelligence fails us, we must choose a path from the ones available. Making a wise decision is extremely valuable. Making a bad decision is less so. But making no decision at all is the worst. Sitting in the desert and allowing ourselves to die without living first is a waste of our intelligence, a waste of our potential and a gauranteed way to feel dead long before our “life” stops. And on the upside, if you choose a direction and maybe find that special something, people will know that you are a genius and that you lived a “meaningful” life.

(There is no answer to the meaning of life, because the meaning of life is not a question. Think about that for a second. Or don’t. It really makes no sense. We have life. Thats that. Now give it meaning.)