Reluctant Luddite

Taking Windows Even Farther Back in History Than Turning Vista into XP

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:02:00 +0000

This has an ironically pointless appeal. Not that Windows isn't enough of a productivity sink now, let alone in 3.11, two major revisions before it became less trouble than it was worth.

From DownloadSquad:

Old school fun: WindowBlinds skin turns Vista, XP into Windows 3.11

Sat collision highlights importance of picking up your toys

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:28:00 +0000

The Beeb is actually a lot less Chicken Little about this than most other outlets, but even it's a little wonky. With that many satellites, it seems surprising there aren't more collisions, but living in shallow 3-d we have an inaccurate perception of how big space (any space, not just the black-and-airless kind) is once you get your feet off the ground.

We only perceive the space around us, usually in the space that extends from our eyeline to about waist level (that's why people trip on things that are easily visible but are below knee level, unless they see them while still relatively far away). So anything we perceive as "near" is usually on that plane and within a distance that changes based on the size of the object and the speed with which it or we are moving. Excellent perceptual basis for a creature that once climbed in trees and needed to be sure where the stable branches were, but was a lot more comfortable not thinking about the distance to the ground.

Once you get more than a body length off the ground, though, the volume of space around you increases by orders of magnitude (Add a zero to whatever number you were thinking.)

When you get up as high as orbit, it's a challenge just seeing something that's near enough to be a danger. The International Space Station is 270 miles below the satellites that collided. And it's not directly below. It's somewhere on a giant sphere whose radius is 270 miles smaller than the one the satellites are sitting on (geometrically speaking, of course, where the spheres are the distance from Earth that equates with their orbits. Here's a decent illustration.)

The two sats are each about the size of a smallish car, 528 miles above ground. That's a lot of space to fill. And pretty long odds against anything hitting anything else by accident.

The collision between a US and Russian satellite in space highlights the growing importance of monitoring objects in orbit.

It also shows that there are still major capability gaps in current systems set up for this task.

There are about 17,000 man-made objects above 10cm in size that orbit Earth - and the tally is constantly increasing. This in turn raises the risk of collisions between objects. ... rest of the BBC story is here

Unusual spam

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:58:00 +0000

I got a spam this morning trying to get me interested in watersports, and it was about boating!

Technorati

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:28:00 +0000

This is actually a link so Technorati can find me and get me into its search engines. Kind of self-serving, I know, and nothing readers are particularly interested. Makes me wonder, though, how much promotional crap has to appear on a blog before it starts pissing people off.

A lot of people freaked out when cable stations started putting little logos on the screen to ID what channel you're watching. That never bothered me; actually I rarely noticed them. Those things have been growing to the extent that you often have a whole layer of identifiers and promos for other shows running at the bottom of the screen.

That's a little distracting, but only really annoying when they start rolling clips or dynamic grafix down there.

I don't usually pay much attention to the social-networking promos or links on web content, either, except when they get really excessive, as is the case with one of the sites I write for.

The links I put on here are mainly to get the blog to appear in various places, not necessarily encourage people to go post links. So I hope they don't bother you.

There's a fine line between avoiding visual spam and keeping your radar profile so small no one ever finds you.

Thanks for reading, anyway.

Technorati Profile

Wanted: Destroyer of space shuttles

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:59:00 +0000

No kidding. I know NASA used to arm unmanned rockets with self-destruct devices to blow errant rockets up before they hit populated areas, I didn't know they did it with manned shuttles as well.

Given how often they have false-positives on various danger tests and abortive attempts at take-off, reentry and honesty in budget proposing and airline-danger-report-censoring, you'd think this would make the astronauts nervous.

I desperately wish this thing were on the market

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:31:00 +0000

The intersection of Cool and Useful

Although this update might have it beat:

Heat-sink vest could save lives, improve athletic performance

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:51:00 +0000

This is a much more interesting idea than it looks (though it actually looks like the reverse of those puffy, quilted-down vests that make everyone look like the Sta-Puf Marshmellow Hunter). It looks here like they're treating this vest like an elaborate comfort accessory -- snivel gear, essentially.

I'd be the last one to denigrate that; I'd probably buy the damn thing just for that reason, especially for anything involving a lot of effort and very little breeze during summer months -- hiking, yardwork, running.

But it turns out that heat is a major contributor to fatigue, especially during exercise. Cooling some part of the body (preferably one wiht a lot of blood circulation) during exercise reduces the core temperature and as much as doubles the endurance of some of the athletes who have participated in the experiments.

This is a fairly limited test, but I've seen others in which runners or cyclists on stationary equipment keep keep one hand stuck in a big heavy cooling mitt (it's not a glove, really, more of an appliance). They were able to keep going looong after they should have had to quit, because their blood was cooled as it circulated through just one hand.

I'd be very surprised if we didn't start seeing some similar bit of cooling gear -- either the vest or the glove or something wrapped around the shoulders or neck -- as a regular piece of equipment for not only race drivers and other competitors for whom weight isn't much of an issue, to even football players, cyclists and others who have to perform at peak over a long period during hot weather.

It could probably not only improve performance, but also reduce the rash of heart attacks and heat-prostration deaths you hear about every year when football teams come back to two-a-day practices in August.

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:48:00 +0000

How to get around the time-sucking Ribbon in MS Word

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:17:00 +0000

I had to upgrade to MS Word 2007 -- unwillingly and mainly because I could get a full, legal copy of Office through work for $20. It was 2007, though, not any of the decent versions. Suddenly I had to spend as much time time trying to find commands I'd used every day for years as I did writing. This article describes how to avoid Word 2007's Ribbon without spending too much or having to learn another app. They're lifesavers. Kill the ribbon.

read more | digg story

Password keeper falls flat

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:43:00 +0000

I've always avoided password-automation software for two reasons: First, storing your passwords all in one basket, so to speak, reduces your overall security by putting all your valuable access codes in one place, behind one password. Without a password keeper, someone intent on stealing all your info (after, say, finding your lost laptop in an airport) would have to guess all the banks or online services you use, find your username and THEN figure out what your password is. With a password keeper, all that info is in one place, theoretically making all your business info available in one place.

The second reason is that I always figured if you have so many accounts to log into that you can't remember your username/password combos, you need to simplify.

I finally changed my tune, after going freelance and having the wonderful opportunity to log into the CMAs of several publishers several times per week. A couple of them make me log in several times -- for each of the micro-sites I work on. Then I have my own emails, domains, blogs and various other detrita.

Having some of that logging in automated suddently looked attractive.

Since password keepers aren't particularly fun to play with, I went to Freewaregenius, AppAholic, Lifehacker and Downloads.com looking for recommendations. I eventually downloaded KeePass Password Security which, appears to actually be secure.

It encrypts your passwords in a database, avoids keyloggers that might otherwise grab your passwords as they go through, and generally works hard to keep bad guys from getting your data.

On the other hand, every time you want to log in to something, you have to either cut-and-paste password data from KeePass to your browser, or drag the information to the right field. That's actually a cool feature, in one way of looking at it. You can open the list of your logins, click on the Username field for the one you're working on, and drag it over to the Username field in your browser. Then do the same with your password, which is obscured with hashmarks.

If you drag the password to the username field, though, you're out of luck, which means you have ot pay that much more attention than you would ordinarily. And KeePass doesn't log in automatically for you.

So you're left pretty much with a relatively secure database for your passwords rather than a utility that will securely log in to your Web sites for you.

Firefox comes with a password-keeping feature, and it logs in automatically for you. But if you have Firefox set to clear all your private data when you shut down the browser, it forgets both the sites and the login data when you shut the browser down. Even when you (or at least I) tell it not to, it clears your password info as well as your surfing record.

So, even free, KeePass isn't worth the cost of installing and using it. I still don't trust Firefox's ability to keep a stored password safe, but at least it won't make me add another step to every additional login.

KeePass goes back where it came from.

User error: Romanian Man Superglues Condom to Penis

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:33:00 +0000

I'm all in favor of hacking your own stuff to make it fit better or work the way you want it to. I've even been known to do it wrong (more accurately, I've occasionally done it right[ish]).

And god knows I oppose reading the directions on the package, in whatever language to which they've been badly translated.

But this guy was doing things seriously wrong:

The 43-year-old father-of-five told doctors he and his wife didn’t want any more children. Their obvious solution was to start using condoms, but the condoms Nicolae Popovici’s wife bought were a bit ‘roomy’.

Sigh.

Good technology, bad judgment

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:48:00 +0000

In 2009 certain Volvo models will offer to massage your back and blow on your butt while you drive. Just the thing to help out toward the end of a long drive, when your back is most likely to be sore, and your eyes want to close, a nice little massage would be just the thing, right?

Rear-view cameras so you don't run over Rover? Great. Automatic parallel parking (not on the Volvo, which will be busy blowing on your nether regions)? Great. Ports to plug in your MP3 player, built-in GPS, DVD players and screens in the back seat, real-live plugs to plug in your gadgets? All great.

Things that actually help keep the car upright and on the road? Great. Not as cool as the GPS and the rear-view. But still great.

Massaging the driver while the car is in motion? No.

On the other hand, when I'm jumping lanes at twice the speed limit, wind in my hair, bugs in my teeth, tiny little helmet perched ineffectually on my head, screams of startled motorists echoing in my ears as I blow by, stretched out over the tank of an overpowered superbike, organ donor card signed and safe in my wallet, I'm not worried about an involuntary dismount. I'm thinking about the inconclusive evidence that exposure to the electromagnetic fields generated by the engine might increase my risk of prostate or colon cancer.

Thank god someone worried about the real risks of motorcycling has developed a bike seat to shield your bits from an EM field that's completely different and more dangerous than those generated by your phone, your microwave, your laptop, monitor, TV and electric lines in your house.

Maybe if it could give a little massage or nice cool breeze.

Book handles? Bad enough Amazon wants us to pay $400 for a display screen with less going for it than the laptops or iPods or phones or handheld games that could all display large amounts of text with no problem. Now we need accessories for actual paper books.

This video, on the other hand, totally rocks, or did, once I realized the legs were part of the robot, not half a homeless person. Completely pointless, as far as I can see; purposely, elegantly pointless and therefore fully justifying its own existence. Until it caught fire and exploded.

Nothing's perfect.

What's next, the all-toothpick British man 'o war?

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:10:00 +0000

And what music Hrothgar the Good Humor man play on his rounds to offer kids a cold treat and bloody, horrible death from a ship filled with murderous barbarian raiders?

Plus, you have to wonder what is the point. If you can make a speedboat made out of fibers of carbon or glass held in place by resin and glue, what great advance have you made doing the same thing with little wooden sticks.

DEN OEVER, The Netherlands (Reuters) - A Viking ship made from ice-cream sticks set sail for England from the Netherlands on Tuesday.

Ex-Catholics are second-largest US "denomination," what about physicists?

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:22:00 +0000

I don't agree with people who think science and religion are incompatible, though I don't have much patience for the specific mythology of most religious doctrines. I know plenty of people who combine the two (and some who say they are atheists, but attend religious services and participate in a religious community actively, more as a community of conscience than a doctrinal one).

It's pretty interesting to watch the migration of belief, though, as an indicator of what people are actually looking for in their lives, in the same way that U.S. immigration patterns highlight periods of economic difficulty or political instability in the source countries (or comparative changes, as in the times that the U.S. economy or social freedom increase faster than those of the rest of the world).

A recent Pew Forum study of religion (released March 3, 2008) shows that one third of those who said they were raised Roman Catholic in the U.S. are now former Catholics. That group (about 30 million) is almost twice as large as the second-largest single denomination -- 16.5 million Southern Baptists. Despite the loss, the percentage of the U.S. population and total number of Catholics in the U.S. has remained relatively stable at 66 million, presumably because of the large percentage of recent immigrants from Latin America who are Catholic.

The weird thing is that at the same time the Catholic church is losing so many of those born into it due to its doctrinal rigidity, equally rigid and unforgiving Protestant denominations are growing as well. What does that tell you about the underlying priorities of Americans? That they're pushing forward into a more objective, empirical view of the universe as something not intimately controlled by an invisible puppet master? Or that they're starting to think that way, and don't want men in dresses and funny hats to tell them what to do, but still want the fuzzy comfort of some kind of deity and religious community to take the edge off the image of a harsh, impersonal universe?

I'm guessing the latter, in most cases, based on the number of people who describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious," which is having your cake and eating it, too. You don't acknowledge a deity or denomination who can tell you what to do, but don't want to think you're just one of a type of forest ape who's learned to build particularly secure nests.

It is a scary, big universe out there, if you put your own existence into the context of a universe with millions of galaxies compared with which our whole Solar System is just one of a trillion motes of dust.

But if we're so good at focusing on our own concerns and ignoring those that don't have any day-to-day impact on us -- Darfur? Bosnia? Tibet? Your best friend from elementary school who you haven't talked to in a couple of decades? -- why worry so much about how big the universe is compared to your own little slice of it?

I'm optimistic about humanity and it's persistent existential angst. (Not my own, of course; since I'm so close to it I can see that it's far more significant than the global concerns of an entire species.)

We're easily self-obsessed enough to narrow our field of concern to things that can fit in our own brains. Why worry about a universe so big you can't conceive its size, made up largely of dark matter you can't even perceive, when the lawn needs raking, you're worried about work and your car keeps making that weird sound that's not quite bad enough to do something about?

Think about lunch, instead; it'll have a more immediate impact. Or about why a Pope so concerned about the dignity of religion and the church in the modern age would go out in public wearing a silly had and red designer loafers? Then you can claim to be thinking spiritually and get a laugh at the same time.

Besides, there was an article out yesterday claiming that physicists (the most quantitative religion, if you consider how strongly they believe in quantum mechanics and string theory and how ridiculous both seem compared to the behavior of the super-quantum universe) found evidence of what came before the Big Bang that created not only everything in the universe, but the universe itself.

They now think that before the Big Bang, there existed -- wait for it -- a universe exactly like the one we're in now. Talk about an anticlimax. Who cares. Once you've seen one universe...

On the other hand, they may just be trying to hang onto what shreds of dignity they have left, as sub-nanoparticular points in an increasingly large universe.

When you grow up enough to shrug off the mythological comforts of your childhood, you probably still like to have something fuzzy and warm to hold onto, however weird it turns out to be.

Right tool for the right job; how to get organized

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:54:00 +0000

I've been testing out a ton of productivity and project management tools lately. SimplyFile, Getting Things Done, Action Project Manager, MPS Take Back Your Life, Xobni, ClearContext.

I wrote up a couple of things for various pubs on them. I'll post the links as soon as they're up.

For the most part what I've found is that the less ambitious the application is, and the less trouble to set up, the more effective it is. Clear Context is beautiful; MPS and SimplyFile look simple and elegant. GTD looks like it has a solid base of research into efficient use of time behind it (it may have just been written by an anal-retentive bore, though, it's hard to tell). None of them have actually saved me any time so far.

I was primarily looking for a way to sift through mail quickly, create, track and execute tasks effectively, and create appointments and deadlines in a calendar. I wanted all those functions to be easy to access, simple to learn, and not require that I change the way I think about or go about my scheduling and work.

I've tried to impose organizational processes on myself before, and they don't work any more than a diet would that allows you only to eat food you don't like. It requires too much of a change in process, so I'd have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to get organized rather than actually doing things.

Every time I have a job change that adds a bunch of tasks, I struggle with getting them under control – mainly because I don't have in my head the expectation of when to do them and how. Once I get that down, all I need is a reminder now and then; beforehand, no amount of task-listing is going to keep me on track.

So I just track the deadlines and do a kind of mental inventory of what I need to do on each project to get it done by that time.

What saves time during that phase – when saving time is most valuable – are things that create shortcuts to allow me to do things I would do anyway.

The best (and these will sound foolish if you're looking for a Getting Things Done-type methodology) have been Volumouse, Copernic, Outlook and Google.

Volumouse – a small shareware utility that runs in the background and lets you adjust the volume on your PC by right-clicking your mouse and rolling the scroll wheel – lets me avoid launching the Sound control panel every time I want to turn the radio down when someone's talking to me or the phone rings. That's often a dozen or two times a day, sometimes only for a second.

My Dell Vostro laptop, which I love in many ways, most of them legal, has some kind of learning disability when it comes to sound. It refused to even recognize the sound card for the longest time (and hours on the phone with three levels of phone support with Dell, only one of them useful), still won't recognize the modem (even though Dell sent a replacement), and occasionally decides the sound card isn't there at all.

Even with the nifty (theoretically) media-player buttons on the case that would let me play a music CD without even turning on the laptop (Kind of a pointless exercise. if I need the laptop, it's on; if I don't, I have an MP3 player.)

With Volumouse I don't even have to take my hand off the mouse; just scroll the sound down, and scroll it back up again.

The freeware Copernic lets me store stuff on my laptop and find it again even if I'm not completely sure where it is. I'm not in love with it, but I couldn't do without it. I've tried all the other search engines, including Msft's latest and Google Desktop, and none of them respond fast enough, find enough files correctly, or limit themselves to the areas I want to search. (Knowing the person's name I'm searching for is mentioned on hundreds of websites doesn't help, GoogleDesktop, if I'm looking for the Word file with notes from my interview with that person, though thanks for the extra ad exposures, anyway.)

A previous version of Copernic's search engine, called X1, actually worked a lot better. At least one acquisition, a marketing strategy change and a couple of technical refreshes weakened it, but it's still my least-disliked desktop search tool.

Outlook, much as it pains me to admit, has all the elements you need to manage a schedule, task list and email. They're all clunky, many are hidden, and there are incompatibilities and functional holes where there shouldn't be (WHY can't I lock the toolbars in place, Uncle Bill?). But they're present. And they don't require the maintenance, updates and additional filing that a lot of the productivity apps do.

One additional time-saver:

Filebox eXtender is a strange little shareware utility that runs in the background and puts the image of an arrow and a thumbtack in the upper right-hand corner of any Windows application. Clicking the arrow rolls up the window in a very Mac-like way, allowing you to look underneath and save screen space when you're not using that app.

I'm not used to looking for the little scroll windows, so I don't like that feature, but many people do; especially people who have to use a PC but would rather use a Mac.

The time-saving feature is the thumbtack, which keeps that window on top of all the other windows until you tell it to go away. VERY useful if you're writing about something online and are using Google to check spellings and URLs and such, or any time you're having to copy and paste from one application to another.

It lets you stick your writing window on one half the screen and make sure it doesn't go away while you use the other half screen to get the text you want to place. It starts to eat up a lot of memory and sometimes causes Windows 2007 to hang after a while, so I only launch it when I need it. But it saves a ton of time when I do.

PCMag.com used to publish an app that did almost the same thing (and had a similar memory-bleeding problem, so they may be versions of the same app), but I lost my copy when moving from one laptop to another and have been avoiding having to go back and pay the $7 or $8 they charge for it.

Power in the wrong hands

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Whoever first decided to put the light switch on the outside of a bathroom lived with no children, and had no adult friends with a juvenile sense of humor.

On the other hand, trying to brush your teeth while the lights flash on and off makes the whole thing seem much more like clubbing than like simple personal hygiene.

er, "Evolution" of language

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:35:00 +0000

"As they say in Discworld, we are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was."

Relatively Einstein episode 3, "Fantasy Physics"

Ook.

14 Ways to Say Nothing With Scientific Visualization

Al Globus, Eric Raible

Abstract: Scientific visualization can be used to produce very beautiful images. Frequently users and others not properly initiated into the mysteries of visualization research fail to appreciate the artistic qualities of these images. Scientists will frequently use our work to needlessly understand the data from which it is derived. This paper describes a number of effective techniques to confound such pernicious activity. (Update)

Dog breeding and self determination

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:33:00 +0000

According to the highly scientific, probably largely accurate, Animal Planet or Discovery Channel or Dog Channel or whatever special on dog breeding the other night, my golden retriever should be an athlete — compulsively chasing sticks and balls and small animals and diving into any body of water to retrieve theoretical ducks or just swim around.

My dog doesn’t identify with that dog. My dog lives in retriever drag.

Rather than judge by genetics and extrapolate to behavior, we went the other way. Assuming, as breeders apparently do, that genetics defines behavior, we mapped her level of and type activity, personality traits and depth of characteristics such as bravery in the face of the evil UPS guy, thunder and the monstrous toy chihuahua next door.

We’ve decided she’s a mix: half chicken, half carpet.

Twenty-two hours sleep a day. Twenty-one when she's on deadline. And the only time we really saw her run hard was at a parade when an honor guard fired blanks for a salute.

She dragged Mom for half a mile before stopping to hide behind a tree.She loves to ride in the car, but only sticks the tip of her nose out the window so she doesn’t have to face the wind. She was once frightened by a squirrel. She is offended when other dogs sniff her butt, when she even lets them get that close.

Her relatives were theoretically bred for retrieving. She either doesn't know this, or doesn't care. I rolled a ball to her in the kitchen last night. She watched it approach and moved out of the way.Wave a stick until she’s interested, then throw it and she’ll go get it, lie down and chew it into pieces. She’s a StickHound.If she were born human it would have been into a family of athletes and outdoors people. While they were out scaling El Cap she'd be back at the hotel trying to get room service to deliver to her layout by the pool.

Other than cuddling, panting and wagging when you come home, and keeping you company by following you around with toenails clicking until it feels like you're being stalked by a tap dancer, her greatest contribution is to warm up the floor one dog-sized chunk at a time. She works very hard at this. Mostly with her eyes closed.

Personality trumps genetics.

Another example: people directly descended from me are capable of doing math with letters in it. Unselfconsciously. I, on the other hand, count "one, two three, many, lots."

Probably the dog can, too; but it’s a lot of work, so she doesn’t.

Score: Science 0, Self-determination 1

Keys and shoes in the bin, please

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Security in the Ukraine prepares for a visit by George W. Bush by frisking the honor guard it invited to show up in costume to line the red carpet.

Think that wand will pick up anything?
--from Reuters

Why you suck.

noreply@blogger.com (KevinF) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:02:00 +0000

Know what I love about the Web? How well it takes the piss out of anyone.

Today's example is Basecamp, the free online project-management service that is the current IT service among the efficienistae. I created an account a couple of weeks ago to work with a client that uses it as more of an online whiteboard than anything else.

But I forgot the name of the damn thing, so I had to google it. Right under Basecamphq.com -- the proper site -- was WhyBasecampSux.com -- an intelligently reasoned, resource-rich excoriation of the original site.

Which shows why you don't ever want to start a service online -- especially a relatively effective one aimed at technically proficient perfectionists -- that's going to disappoint them because you keep making decisions about upgrades, costs or features that benefit you and not them.

Usually that just gets you a couple tens of thousands of screed and diatribe, which you can ignore as griefer background radiation.

But when you piss people off in their functional specialties, you get special consideration.

In this case you get the objections, unhelpful responses from Basecamp customer service, and a ton of alternatives.

And I've got to tell you, it's a pretty good list.

I've spend enough time checking out new products and services online that I'm fairly decent at searching.

I put a lot of time into it, especially when researching ways to get organized helps me procrastinate on the stuff I'm trying to get done in the first place (it's a kind of anti-productivity; if it ever comes into direct contact with actual productivity there would be a catastrophic explosion, which explains a lot about my personal workstyle and the kinds of people who avoid me).

So turning up a long, long list of sites that offer the same kinds of project management stuff I've been googling recently was a big surprise, but more entertaining because it came at the bottom of a page with a list of complaints about the online project-management service Basecamp, and appeared directly below the main Basecamp listing in a Google search. www.WhyBasecampSux.org. Brilliant.

I love people who get pissed off about poor service or poor quality and DON'T go rant and rave about how horrible and unfair everything is and how important it is for that company to satisfy them personally. They realize that if they were treated badly by customer service it's because the company doesn’t care if you get mad; so getting mad doesn’t help.

Speaking loudly at a dealer's customer-service desk isn't going to make your voice heard at GM headquarters.

Finding a way to get what you want while completely avoiding the offending company, then telling everyone else how to do the same thing, and why? That's a response with some elegance to it. You get what you want, help other people, instead of making them witness your tantrum, and the people you're pissed off at get a little lonelier.

WhyBasecampSux is a really good example of why you shouldn't try to attract customers who are perfectionist, workaholic and tech savvy and then disappoint them. Repeatedly. They remember why you suck, save the evidence, and publish it, with links and quotes that show your customer service people at their most idiotic.

These particular complaints aren't entertaining enough to actually read, but the list of project management sites was a good reward for wading through the I-said-then-they-said stuff.

Usually I hate object lessons; they come in awkward chunks and have sharp corners.

Not this one. Big Businesses can care as little about the concerns of individual customers as Dick Cheney does about opinion polls telling him Iraq is a mistake and that the Darth Vader outfit makes him look chunky.

But when your main product is either information or a service that is available online, so are all your competitors, and your disgruntled customers and a well-researched, well organized site explaining in detail why you suck and what alternatives to you exist.

Intervene in time and these guys will be your wildest advocates; leave them to steam and all they'll do is entertain me.