Looks like it is time for another fiasco/fight with Comcast for us, something that has become at least annual affair. It all started about a month ago, when we saw Comcast truck nearby adding another “happy” customer to their poor network.

As expected, our signal instantly degraded to impossible, with even (digital) TV channels disappearing at times and mostly becoming “blocky” with compression noise. Being busy people, we thought “surely comcast monitors their network and will fix it in a week or two”. Alas, nothing like that happened so a week later we called in.

Technician reluctantly showed up another week later – checked the signal to the “Curb” and shockinly proclaim “it is Way too weak, but I Can’t Do Anything“. He promptly left assuring us that “network people will resolve it”.

About another week later I called in for status, and was told there is no status, no issue, no tickets, no problems. Few days later our Internet died completely, with Modem reporting “no signal” at all. This is where more fun started – A Call to Comcast about modem was met with “What Modem? You Don’t Have One on the Account!”. Really? So how come you were happily charging me Overages for months and months? Turns out my MAC Address is used by someone else somewhere on the West coast, and I must urgently take this modem to local XFinity Center. About half an hour drive later, and another half an hour (with screaming child) waiting for service – happy Rep told me “Oh Yea, we see Many people with this issue. For some reason the phone guys sending customers to us, but really there is Nothing we can do either”. Showing happy clerk the receipt for our modem from 2 years ago (which I kept), the physical device, the assurances that it worked fine until few days ago, and even request to check with manager – Resulted in ZERO progress. I left upset and just stopped by the local Fry’s to buy new modem.

Well, guess what – new modem registered fine (for now at least), but still there is mostly No Internet. The signal is too weak and all corporate escalations are not helping so far. Whenever the new modem does work it is very slow and unstable, nowhere near advertised speeds we are paying good money for.

Apparently Comcast is aware of the issue and it has happened to many people, at least since 2011. In fact even though there is Stupid practice of putting MAC Address right on the outside of the box where everyone can just see & steal it while “browsing” local store shelves, we bought ours brand-new from reputable online store (Newegg). This further leads me to think there is manufacturer issue or Comcast simply spoofing these themselves on some older devices?

So chime in the comments if this has happened to you. Perhaps together we can figure out how a brand new sealed modem bought straight from-the-manufacturers-truck still had stolen MAC Address already? Meanwhile there is still no competition offering Internet in our area – seems like Comcast is aware of this and enjoying their monopoly all the way.

PS: I also called Arris/Motorola support on this, they said that it does happen a lot and normally they replace modems for customers, but since I bought mine so long ago they will not replace mine.

In fact, in modern society it turns out that key to success and survival (and thriving) is reacting Intelligently to any perceived external threat. Here are some modern examples:

• You realize that you forgot the car key inside the car which you just locked – while climbing on top of the car and screaming is natural first reaction of your brain, actually staying calm and figuring out where is the backup key or how to get locksmith there faster, is what will really get you out of that predicament
• In the middle of critical presentation to 20 important people from your company, someone points out that your solution is totally flawed due to incorrect key assumption you made. Again, brain tries to help you by getting you ready to run away from the room and hide in the closet somewhere. However, channeling that anxiety into “tweaking your solution on the spot and presenting even better approach” is the key to winning that day, and in rest of your career.
• Even if indeed you are in an ally and staring at a barrel of a gun of someone demanding your money, running or fighting is only likely to get you killed. Again staying calm under pressure is what will get you out of that situation alive.

But how do we fight this core response of our subconscious brain? Here are several tips that help me and other people, so I decided to collect them here for everyone’s benefit:

1. Often anxiety elevation is ongoing for people, which actually prevents Frontal Lobe from kicking in to Override this primordial response system. For that, start with Meditation – to help your brain return control to the Frontal Lobe. Start with quick Beginners 5 min intro and then later explore more in-depth techniques. If you had prolonged anxiety, try transitioning directly from meditation into some simple fun – like watching comedy or sitcom, listening to relaxing music, etc. You need to “retrain your brain” to recognize that there is a normal “relaxed” state, which is different from your “anxious” state. Deep breaths and various breathing exercises are a good quick fix to try and keep anxiety levels in check when it starts coming back.
2. Now, even with your Frontal Lobe functioning, most likely it will successfully return you to “high anxiety” state pretty quickly. There are few mechanisms at work here, biggest one being Confirmation Bias. What that means is that your brain is actually Looking for things and Interpretations to Explain your anxiety state, which of course leads to Further elevation in Anxiety. This never-ending Cycle is the big killer, so here I revert to my computer programming training and .BREAK THE LOOP. This is probably the trickiest part, so some sub-bullets are in order:
   • Recognize that most of the “bad outcomes” that your brain projects for events are totally unlikely and even try to think of them as “funny”. For example: “why the heck would they ever arrest someone for filing taxes late or filing with mistakes, the prison is really just for violent criminals.”
   • Track down “the culprit” – often it is lack of clarity as to what is expected of you, or “how to succeed”. Solution to both is usually simple, track down each expectation and write it down (digitally or on paper) the minute you identify it. Make it a habit and that way you will always know that “Everything needed is tracked, so no need to speculate about ‘what am I forgetting’”.
   • For Social Anxiety – Focus on recognizing that other people around you are also Children who just landed in older bodies. Even people in a position of power were children not so long ago and now really just “play the part” because society is asking them to, but inside they are often just as anxious as the rest of us. Focus on inner child in everyone, it is definitely still there, and often ignoring the current “outfit” of that person and looking straight in their face to find that “inner child” is the best way.
   • Try scientific approach – challenge your brain to come up with fully experimental and non-anecdotal proof. For example: “what studies were done to establish beyond all doubt that indeed your own beauty is below norm in any way, or that it even matters right now”.
   • Gather inner strength to attack “bad thoughts” by recognizing that only by fighting them you can survive (yea, twist the survival instinct on it’s head). Focus on winning small immediate battles, but also develop longer term Dream that will lend you strength to work towards. It can be something as simple as “to present to large crowd easily”, or as elaborate as “travel into space”.
   • Build up Self-Image – that really helps over long term to ignore what other people may try to say and to give you inner strength to act with confidence. Recognize that this takes time, but constantly keep this important in mind and work tirelessly toward this goal.
   • Hang out with family and friends as much as possible – and give out lots of hugs. It’s amazingly relaxing to hug things out, if you haven’t yet discovered…
   • Practice calming yourself and eliminating your worries Before going to bed. That way while your frontal lobe rests, your subconscious won’t be flooding your body with anxiety totally unchecked. Focus on seeing the next day as “Solution for All Problems “. Even if sometimes it is unrealistic tell yourself before bed that you may “Win the Lottery” (or equivalent) the next day, so always look forward to it.
3. Recognize that you need to take care of Yourself first. Just like on the plane they always tell you to Put On Your Own Mask before putting on mask for your child, same principle applies to your life. You Must Be in your best shape to be able to help others and contribute to society. Focus on getting Proper Nutrition on consistent daily schedule.
4. Ready to read some more on this, try this excellent Wikipedia take on Emotional Self-Regulation. There are also several books on this (which admittedly I didn’t read yet).
5. If you aren’t making progress, try some modern Online CBT. I know of one that is not-free, but something you can instantly access and do in total privacy of your home.

Remember that high anxiety state is directly detrimental to your health! Your body can only last so much in that “adrenaline pumped state”, before things start creaking under pressure, or worse. Identify this and actively fight it – if nothing here helps, go seek further help – there are medicines today that are not addictive.

Try to get yourself calm enough to watch 1h:16m video, it will give you strength to act with even more confidence in the future: Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

.

About a week ago a message popped up on my phone (where Skype is installed also) saying that my account is now suspended. Surprised, I followed their instructions to fill out Microsoft support “Un-suspend form”. That only prompted email 24 hours later requesting an even Bigger un-suspend form for me to fill.

I of course suspected potential Skype account compromise from the beginning, but checking history of access in my Microsoft account showed no unusual activity. I have switched to using my Microsoft user the moment Microsoft started the migration from Skype to Microsoft accounts.

This ridiculous cycle continues now for 3 or 4 times at least. I fill out same Un-suspend form that Skype support emails me, and they email me same form link again 24 hours later, asking me to fill it out. Worse yet, it is clear that they aren’t even trying to read anything I write, as every time they say “be sure to request password reset”, which is not at all what I need! I fully know my password and confirmed that it’s fully secure!

So I took a step back and analyzed things further and the only logical conclusion is that Microsoft is STILL allowing login to Skype using 10 year old credentials that existed before Microsoft accounts! Worse yet, Even for users that already migrated away from using Skype login, the old Insecure password!

I am pretty sure that by now, with so many industry compromises, old insecure passwords some of us used 10+ years back are “Floating” out there for sale or otherwise. For Microsoft to allow that old login to still be active is borderline Criminal! There are no indications in one’s Skype account that old Skype credentials stay active, nor Ever any requests to update/replace that old password yearly. To confirm my theory I in-fact tried to login with those old insecure credentials, only to see that I do still go through and face the evil “Account Suspended” message!!!

Skype provides no customer service phone number to contact, not even Chat support. Their email/forms to fill out only return after 24 hours or so, and as mentioned, no-one even tries to read what I put on that form. Truth is, there isn’t much for me to fill out in that form. It asks what month and year did I open my account – would any of us remember? It also asks about any financial transactions I made with Skype, which I never did (since other VoIP services were always cheaper and more convenient, working from real phones). It asks for date of birth, which I never submitted to Skype as even back in a day I registered I already was concerned with online security. It asks for billing address, which they obviously don’t have because again – I never paid for anything. So that form is fully useless, of course, as seems to be their whole customer service. Sadly, Microsoft is probably paying good money for that “offshore support” (responses always come at night), but obviously they don’t have any iota of understanding how to actually provide it or even when to know to escalate to someone who can help.

I will update this post if something develops, but meanwhile – here’s something you should do Right Now. If you have registered like me, Many Years Ago, go to Skype.com and see if there is any way to change/disable any old credentials you may have used before switching to secure Microsoft account. If there isn’t any way to disable that old insecure login, at least see if you can change that old password to some jumble of letters and digits, that won’t be easy to crack as our 1999 passwords used to be…

UPDATE: I was finally able to restore my Skype access. It is as I suspected, the old Skype account is still active “underneath Microsoft account”, even if you never use it. Please ensure it has complex or even “random jumble” style password. Furthermore, looks like Skype’s own password policy has been greatly improved over the years and my old password was Not Even Nearly secure enough to meet their current policies. However, there was never an alert to change it, not a single email reminding me that old password is too short or too old. Nor any notice ever came out when new device in Africa logged into my account – not a single email on that. So Skype seriously needs to update their security practices, and so should we all.

Indeed this malware is very nasty – somehow it manages to bypass all Chrome guards and download + execute right away, without giving any option to avoid it. I immediately submitted the site to Google for blocking in Chrome. Then I proceeded to submit to Microsoft, since their silly Microsoft Security Essentials continued to insist that no malware/virus found.

Here’s link to analysis: img_012.scr  (MD5: 6e7ccceb2685044d443474ce1efc7bbf)

So, the biggest question is What Does It Do? So far I only saw that it communicates with Steam client, managing to Spam a link to an infected site hosting this malware to ALL of one’s Steam Friends. From reading online, the malware also attempts to steal your Steam account credentials, presumably to steal you Digital Loot, like Game Objects and even complete “Giftable” game copies (if you have any). I couldn’t confirm this as we didn’t see any adverse impacts, but maybe it wasn’t able to fully work. Sadly, since no Antivirus properly detects it yet, it is very hard to tell if it’s fully cleaned. I saw it already submitted to Malware Bytes and they promise to analyze it ASAP – so I recommend you go there first and install that Excellent (and Free) scanner on your PC.

Here’s some more recommendations if it happens to you – immediately proceed to Steam Guard (in Steam client Settings) and make sure it’s active. Then double check that you don’t have any screen-saver installed (use Personalize and reset Screen Saver to None). Reboot after this – and then proceed to relaunch Steam and select “De-authorize All Computers” under Steam Guard. I would recommend changing password also – and another reboot. Disclaimer: This is new attack so I am not sure this wipes it out. I’ll update this post as I learn more info about this nasty critter.

Since this attack is specifically tailored to attack Steam, the image sandbox PCs virus companies use as honeypot may not be able to fully realize it’s attack as their image would not have Steam client installed and configured.

To be extra safe, we are also going to re-install Steam client – I would recommend that as well, as I was seeing some steam files being updated after this attack, but it may have just been a coincidence also. Since you can have Steam libraries, you can even fully re-install Steam client without having to re-download the games. Ping me in comments if you need further instructions for this – and Good Luck!

For those not familiar with the series, let me start of with by focusing on particularly ugly misinformation in the films:

• The films pile Communism along with Capitalism and others as a Monetary system. That is just a complete fib, and if you don’t believe me, just read the first 2 sentences on Wikipedia definition of Communism. In fact The Venus Project and various others like it are just pure Communism solutions, but of course they stay away from being labeled as such, seeing how Communism got nothing but bad publicity in the past.
• The Evil “Profit” is really not an aspect of Monetary system, but rather a key element of Capitalism. Meanwhile Evil “Interest” is not inherently there to enslave us, but rather an aspect of Monetary system that ensures that Money is properly allocated and remain “active”, instead of piling up idly “in someone’s mattress”.
• Artificial Scarcity goes hand in hand with Price Gauging and other Capitalism evils that are well known, hence US and most other Western countries have laws to abolish these practices and prosecute anyone engaging in Collusion or Monopoly. Free Market is designed by definition to eliminate scarcity and encourage competition, driving price and the Evil Profit down.
• The current “Glue” of society, that which guides us as humans, is Money. This is how we got our Technology to progress as far as it has. This is the key principle that allowed us to combine “Human Ingenuity” of many people towards the common goal. Without it, we each would be exploring duplicate or disparate ideas and likely progress would be much slower. Furthermore, without it most likely no-one would take the time to fully educate our children generation to pass on the knowledge collected over time. That knowledge and education is what allows us humans to continue and excel – Standing on the Shoulders Of Giants as we often call it.
• Ecological impact remains 100% relevant even with Money-Free society. There will always be someone who feels it is fine to dump pollution, as long as it is not in our “city limits”. Or another who is fine mining Lithium, even if it may collapse a mountain where 1 million “other” people grow their crops today? How will we resolve such disputes? Weapons?
• Problems without monetary gain are “not solved” today – absolute fib, obviously. Society richest people pledging their funds more than ever now, and even large corporations are engaged with philanthropy, more so than ever before. Furthermore, most of humanity’s crippling diseases are being researched on a massive scale, thanks to donations and large R&D budgets of established Pharmaceuticals. This is exactly where Monetary system shines, whereas in pure Communism it is unclear whether we could guide so many of our brightest minds into these important common goals.
• Planned Obsolescence is presented as big evil also, while I contend that it is actually great positive as our society faces accelerated progress forward. With more and more investment into R&D (mostly to stay competitive, another big positive) there are continuous new discoveries that benefit all kinds of products. Another thing one would learn in business school (ahem), is that various brands position themselves for different durability, which is signaled to consumers in price and generally in brand. I will fully agree that we have big issue with lack of good recycling techniques. There seems to be lack of incentive there, for our economy, but I am seeing increased interest there as well, as we dispose of more and more useful things.
• Israeli Kibutz is mentioned as non-violent place, which is true. However, I think it is of greater interest as one of the best incarnations of working communism on the planet now, albeit on a small and isolated scale.

Technological Utopia (what they call “The Venus Project”) was envisioned years ago, and even subject of one of the original Star-Trek episodes. I still believe that key issues that approach suffers from are still unresolved, including all essential Human Incentive problem, predicting and managing demand/supply and covering all critical “professions” for sustainability. Presence of Money solves all these via signaling mechanism, same one that movie presents as “evil” and “leading to inequality”.
Similar ideas have been tried and failed, so far. Latest example, and perhaps most similar to the series, is the Israeli Kibbutz cooperative. In conclusion, here is an interesting read about how they are faring today.
Although one way to look at money is debt, the true essence that we use it for in our economy is signaling. Here is a simple example where moneyless economy runs into trouble: You have newly designed holocam coming off the manufacturing line. First one is due to ship tomorrow, and both 19 year old gifted woman and 70 year old scientist are interested in it. How do we decide who gets the first one? First come first serve? what if 70 year old scientist happens to be the one who found cure for cancer? What if 3rd person is interested, one who invented faster than light space-travel? How do we measure one contribution against another? Today the answer is pretty much Money.

We are long time Tivo customers and advocates and have 2 units at home which we enjoyed for many years. Recently, after HDMI output on our newer Tivo HD unit broke, we decided to upgrade to latest Tivo Premiere. We were disappointed to learn of increased monthly fee, but we finally decided that even with Many Great alternatives out there, we prefer the time-tested convenience of a Tivo box. Our new Premiere unit arrived as advertised and I promptly began the monumental effort needed to set it up and transfer data from our existing unit.

The manual transfer of previous recording that we didn’t watch yet is long and tedious process which could have easily been automated in about 1 week of effort for average developer IMHO. Instead I have to go through 3 screens of prompts for Every Single Show I have on the box. Few days (literally) later, I finally got that out of the way, so I set to transfer Season Passes. “Luckily” there is a handy Season Pass Manager on Tivo.com, I thought, but this is where the first big disaster hit! After reporting that many season passes cannot be transferred because there are no upcoming airing in the next 2 weeks, even remaining shows that supposedly should transfer did not arrive on the Tivo Premiere. Instead, I was greeted with countless “corrupt, delete me” entries on the Tivo box.

As I tried to recover from this by transferring only few shows at a time, Tivo website went completely nuts. Many reboots, Re-Syncs and support calls later – I was told to stop trying and just manually re-create our 150 passes… Naively I tried that as well, just for a bit, as I quickly discovered that Glee show (in Tivo’s own Top 5 Most Popular list and one of our favorites) Cannot Be Subscribed To! It simply pops up with “No Airings In the Next Two Weeks” error. I guess I naively thought that ability to keep your favorite show subscriptions was Tivo’s big selling point.

Meanwhile we started noticing many other things wrong with our “shiny new” Tivo. For the first week over 30 channels were completely missing their guide. I went through different troubleshooting steps daily with various Tivo techs, to no avail. Finally, I figured it out all by myself, managing to restore that part of functionality by repeating guided setup steps.

Still, there were many other issues – worse among them is the jumping screen and skipping video, especially if recording on the same channel as watching. Well, after some more calls, one of the techs suggested that perhaps we got a bad one and they will be happy to replace our new purchase. Reluctantly I agreed and another week later we received a Refurbished Tivo premiere unit (What??!?). Being at complete dead-end with options I spent Another Week transferring shows and doing CableCard pairing. Well, today I switched out the units and we were able to confirm most of the same issues on this Tivo Premiere as well.

As you can tell, we are still in shock and not sure where to go from here. It is very hard to justify monthly payment to Tivo when our experience with the unit is so horrid. As an aside, their whole Tivo Stream as a separate Expensive and Intrusive box is just another insult, since Tivo Premiere already comes with high speed network connection, and records everything digitally.

Back To My Big Question – Why Mess with what Is Not Broken!? We used Tivo HD and previous Tivo units for years and Never had these issues! This is with same CableCard and Cable connection, so they really can’t blame Comcast here! In fact, many issues are clearly Software Defects! It also becomes obvious that they lost all their good developers once you try their iPad Tivo client. While showing some promise, it promptly underwhelms you with limited features, constant crashes, disconnects and endless “refresh” loops. Tivo Inc’s company appeal over other Cable boxes Always Was their Software! How On Earth would they allow themselves to totally “rewrite” software for this new box and introduce so Many New Bugs and such a Poor User Experience!!?!?

PS: I ordered HDHomeRun Prime now and look forward to posting my experience here

Quick primer before diving into Java – most operating systems organize memory for a running program as Heap and Stack. These are just designations for areas of memory allocated to your program, but the way they are utilized differs slightly as we’ll see below. And if you don’t know what Object is, for our purposes it’s just a little set of data organized together.

There is fundamental difference in Java between Object variables and Primitive variables. The latter is those built-in types we all grew to love from most languages, like int, long and float. They are actually very high performance as well because they are quickly allocated on the Stack and CPU operates on them via Native commands.

Meanwhile Objects in Java are just Pointers! Let me demonstrate with this simple example:

   1:     public static void main(String[] args) {

   2:        

   3:        int a = 1;

   4:        int b = a;

   5:        a=3;

   6:        

   7:        System.out.println("A: "+a+" B: "+b);

   8:        

   9:        ArrayList aLst = new ArrayList();

  10:        ArrayList bLst = aLst;      

  11:        aLst.add("I Live in List");

  12:        

  13:        System.out.println(" A List Size: "+aLst.size()+

  14:                           " B List Size: "+bLst.size());

  15:     }

Although lines 3-5 look conceptually similar to lines 9-12, the output is very different:

A: 3 B: 1
A List Size: 1 B List Size: 1

With Primitives we see that assigning a into b truly made a copy, so that when we put 3 into a later, nothing happened to b. Meanwhile, assigning aLst into bLst seems to act differently, as modifying aLst makes something magically appear in bLst!

Although our most respected Java Designer Mr. Gosling tried to hide the pointers complexity away from average developer, it still shows through sometimes, especially when calling Methods and passing Objects around:

   1:     public static void callMeMaybe(ArrayList third, int howOften) {

   2:        howOften = 1;

   3:        third.clear();

   4:        third.add("+1 800-555-1212");

   5:     }

   6:   

   7:     public static void main(String[] args) {

   8:   

   9:        int a = 800;

  10:        ArrayList first = new ArrayList();

  11:        ArrayList second = first;

  12:        first.add("Unlisted Number");

  13:   

  14:        callMeMaybe(second, a);

  15:   

  16:        System.out.println("Our List: "+first);

  17:        System.out.println("A: " + a);

  18:     }

And here is the output, hopefully what you expected by now:

Our List: [+1 800-555-1212]
A: 800

What has happened to our Unlisted Number? And if the evil callMeMaybe method was able to eliminate it, why did we not extract the essential howOften to call information from that same method?

The basic way to understand the difference is to simply remember the Primitives versus Objects distinction. The more complete explanation is that Objects live in the Heap, while pointers to objects (such as first, second and third in our example) live along with Primitives, in the Stack. Each time our program enters a method, new variables (sometimes with copies of values from existing variables) get created on the Stack, and once method is finished, they are released. But even though once callMeMaybe method finishes our third variable gone into the great beyond (along with howOften variable), the object it was pointing to lives on in the Heap, and still available for first to see.

Having understood this we are finally ready to discuss Java’s ‘final’ keyword

Simply put, when this keyword is placed on variable definition, you can only give this variable one value in it’s lifetime. A more complete explanation about the use of final keyword can be found on Wikipedia. My personal recommendation is that you avoid using this keyword, except when defining some truly Constant value in all upper case, like so:

public static final int REQUIRED_HOURS_OF_SLEEP_FOR_HEALTHY_HUMAN = 8;

And especially avoid using it when declaring Object referencing variables, since it does Not do what you would expect. As a simple example, if we were to define third variable in example above as final, it would have no impact on our program behavior or output!

While there are few other cases where final should be used, remember that Optimization is Not one of them.

Good Luck!

Step 1 – If you don’t already have one, get a free account with Skydrive, Dropbox or Google Drive. Right now Skydrive gives most free space while Dropbox had more native clients for iOS, Android and many others. For those unfamiliar with this category – this basically creates a file system in the cloud, where everything you drop into special folder gets synchronized

Step 2 – Works best from Chrome browser, because it has excellent Save As Pdf feature in the Print window! If you are on the Mac, Print window for Everything comes with Save As Pdf button. Finally, on Windows you can install PDF driver, like this PDFCreator which is open source and free. Then, simply Print to it from any App.

Step 3 – Save the PDF into a Dropbox (or Skydrive, etc) folder on your computer. I recommend you actually organize things with subfolders into categories. I have Confirmations, Coupons, Manuals, eBooks, etc.

Step 4 – Open the Dropbox (or Skydrive, Google Drive, etc) dedicated client on your iPhone and just access the PDF whenever needed. Depending on the client app, you may need to “pre-download” the file before going out of Data range or on a flight.

In fact, you can use this simple trick instead of things like Instapaper, Readability and others. There’s really nothing wrong with these other options, I just find that having too many accounts and places to keep information is distracting and chaotic. If anything, Evernote is the one you should consider. Coupled with Clearly addon, it is sometimes better way to save large articles for later offline reading.

There are tons of Free eBook PDFs online: educational, fun and classics. Simply download and drop into your Cloud folder – Voila.

The brilliance of the BrowserQuest is not just in it’s grand fun gameplay, but also that it is truly and completely open-source!

After my son played through 19 of the 20 possible achievements in about 19 minutes, we set out to find the elusive 20th achievement, which is unlisted. Well, as a responsible father (and because it is tons of fun), I set out to find the last one using the source code! The code itself is brilliantly simple. I am really looking forward to promised official post about the architecture, but meanwhile it is easy to see that the entire thing is running on NodeJS server, using BiSON, WebSockets and written in JavaScript and HTML5.

Although it took me only about a minute to track the last achievement down, and figure out that an NPC named Rick is who I need, finding him proved illusive. Even though I had coordinates of the dude from world map definition JSON, it’s really tricky to track him down as game use teleports when doors are opened, to shift you to new area, as I gathered.

So after about an hour of math and checking different door/portal/methods/logic, I just got annoyed and did a quick Google! And voila, of course someone already posted it on our beloved StackOverflow (for Gaming). There you have it – complete fun experience with hidden achievements FTW !!! Next? Just clone the GitHub repo and set of on your own adventure, of making a browser game!!!

Here’s the issue at hand – the list of icons displayed at the bottom of iOS device when you double-click The Button. The “Geniuses” at the Bar insisted that All These Apps were Running, even though I just fully rebooted the device! Furthermore I watched them toil for a long time to Delete My Icons, from a VERY long list which came together as I tried most of my 400 apps, and apparently were the cause of my broken iPad microphone.

Although I am yet to reference Apple SDK on this, I feel that my own understanding here is correct. I believe that iOS shows icons of apps that are Running together with recently used apps. If I open too many apps and device starts running low on memory, it will silently shut down Apps in the background, but leave the icon on the list for re-launch as expected. When I tried to contradict Apple employees on this, I was asked whether “I work for Apple”, which furthered my disturbed serenity.

On the way back as I was enjoying excellent Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance audio-book, I think I developed deeper understanding of what “Intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts” really means at Apple. It is all about device keeping us “at piece” with how we expect it and the World to behave – Serenity is the secret sauce!

Still, back to the disturbance – I have noticed that this specific “running apps” issue is a source of frustration for many people, even some who don’t know true source, but are still frustrated. This is especially felt with iPhones, as they can’t understand why their device lasts all day on one occasion, but dies prematurely the next day, seemingly with exactly same amount of usage! I believe that a person who was deciding to show Running iOS apps list was approaching it from Simplicity and Practicality perspective, not from the Zen  and Tranquility Angle! Otherwise, something as simple as Glow or Highlight on an App that is actually running and consuming battery/resources, however little, would make All the difference people need to eliminate this frustration!!!

That brings me to yet another disturbance that Apple is suffering from, in my book. In the Real-World, the number of mediocre to purely useless Apps is continuously growing! Sometimes, what was state-of-the-art on iOS 2 is almost offensive on iOS 5. Yet, nothing is there designed to help us depreciate our unused Apps, and suggest newer alternatives. Normally I would jump on this as “Startup Opportunity”, but Apple locked up this opportunity for allowing us to Innovate management of Ocean of Apps. Even as brave Appsfire still managed to sneak in there, the efforts are painful and can’t fully develop,

In short – the Magic we’ve come to expect from Apple devices is being compromised! These little things band together into a growing disdain, something Steve would never accept! Seriously, putting “Talking Tom the Cat” (or Ben the Dog) right up at the top, next to ABC, Wall Street Journal and Netflix apps – makes sense to you?!? Clearly these appeal to VERY different audience, and although App Genius tries to resolve some of that, not being able to remove old apps or categorize Kids versus Adults, is a Big issue.

For me, the mere act of putting these thoughts out there and reading your comments is sure to restore the Tranquility – that and the next iOS upgrade!

PS: Thanks to my old friend Eran Zadok for recommending this wonderful book to me about 15 years ago – yes, I am a bit behind on my reading list

No, I am not getting into publishing Children’s Books, though maybe I should, since new iBooks Author makes it easy. Instead, this post is all about the venerable Marketplace, the tough competition and the Innovator’s Dilemma.

I wanted to weigh in on RIM’s situation, after reading about Mr. Heins trying to defend himself and his company. Granted, RIM really was an innovator back in a day, with their breakthrough platform for routing emails, internet and other information we care about – directly to our mobile devices. Today, however, that is a bygone conclusion – a feature that everyone expects as Standard right now.

Apple outplayed them (and pretty much everyone) by focusing on User Experience. I really believe they were the first to realize that good user experience starts with Presentation, and they invested to bring Top Notch graphics into mobile devices. They also realized that Battery Life is critical – a cell phone without power is a paper-weight.

But how does one innovate? Start by reading latest Sci-Fi, then ask yourself – why is this fiction? Maybe it is Seth Godin’s Poke the Box influence on me, a book I am enjoying this week, but I really want to give some tips for once-mighty RIM. Being a Me-Too is a tough place to be – especially in the current marketplace. With three mighty companies there (Apple, Google and Microsoft), and with biggest decision point for consumers (all else being similar) is focused on Overall Experience and Apps Ecosystem.

Innovation is all about revolution and radical jumps forward, not small incremental improvements. Alas, did you know that Large Jumps Forwards are HARD?! I say RIM should focus All Their Resources on Radical, on Revolutionary, on Rethinking. And maybe I don’t see it, but bringing us yet another operating system (or platform on top of *NIX) is just a Large Waste of Resources. Those talented people should be focused on revolutionizing every other aspect of the mobile experience, and leave the base platform alone, to leverage existing ecosphere of Apps.

I was going to title this post “The Exciting Adventures of the Brave Me-2 Ship”, but you know what, being a Me-2 is never exciting nor brave…

For impatient souls among us, here are my conclusions:

• First thing – check the SATA/EIDE and power cable connection between your hard-drive and the motherboard. If possible, try another SATA outlet on motherboard or another SATA cable if available.
• If it still happens, the bad news is that this is likely a disk controller error, which is especially problematic since nowadays disk controllers are built into the Motherboard. If you are in a budget crunch, one potential workaround is to slow down your HD to use different PIO. This may avoid hangs, but will slow overall performance, so no fun solution…
• Proper solution appears to be to replace motherboard, hence replacing disk controller. There are many motherboards starting at just $50 and in most cases it will improve overall performance and stability for you, even if you keep the same CPU and other components.

I am pretty confident that this is the right diagnosis, as we went through a lot of trial and error investigative work, in a space of few weeks, after it started abruptly. At first, I was pretty much convinced that HD is dying. The system had two hard-drives, and the older hard-drive was seemingly working just fine, even with the same SATA cable and connected to the same slot on the Motherboard. Turns out it was using slower PIO by virtue of it being older HDD. During the troubleshooting process I reinstalled fresh Windows 7 64 Bit multiple times, on various HD drives, only to see the issue start happening almost instantly after clean install. Few days ago a fresh HDD became available (separate long story), so I tried replacing the “dying” HD. Guess what, it being newer HD, it was instantly affected by the same issue, even though I put clean Windows there also. Thus it was concluded that controller was faulty, and I went shopping for a new motherboard. As an aside – DDR3 memory is Ridiculously Cheap. I was able to pick up 8 GB of Gamer grade memory for $25 (after rebate), so that is another bonus with upgrade.

We ended up replacing CPU also (time for upgrade anyhow), but all other components stayed the same. Right now I have 3 Hard-drives happily working flawlessly there, including the “dying” HD, and the rest of the computer is faster and better than ever.

Feel free to leave comments if you are still struggling with this issue, and I will try to answer. Good Luck and Happy New Year!

PS: As a bonus tip – while I was troubleshooting, I had to reinstall Windows 7 couple of times on various HD drives. Did you know you can avoid “tarnishing” your license in such scenario by Skipping product key page during Windows 7 setup? Very handy, and then you have up to 28 days to put your real key in and activate. During that period Windows is fully functional and we had used it like that for over a week while troubleshooting.

And now – it’s 11.11 pm and I am racing against the Clock to publish my First Game into the Android Marketplace on this Special Day!

Yes, the game is coming! So this post will have to wait, and WILL get updated.

UPDATE: Game is Live on Android Market!

Now, the next morning – reflecting on the freedom of the weekend. I am at the crossroad for my next project – we (as a family) have been brainstorming making another Game. Yet, I got so annoyed when my main 1tb drive crashed few weeks back, that I think I’ll make a diversion from that plan. You see, I am pretty sure that Most (albeit not alll and sometimes not latest) files were mirrored on most of my other PC hard-drives or External hard-drives. But it is such a nightmare to know what was and what wasn’t, and where it is!? I am trying Windows Live Mesh again to see if it can help me manage and mirror files around our home, but Alas, it is dead slow with big number of large files, such as video collection.

It seems that often in life we get paralyzed by inaction. As Steve Jobs would say – The Penalty for Failure is Virtually Non-Existent! So with these inspiring words I think I’ll embark on creating my own version of file management solution, but done right and taking Modern Digital Life into account!

Opinions welcome and if you do manage to point me to a solution which already works, I will probably just use it and return to our original “Next Game” plan.

Actually, today’s post is a bit more technical than that simple discussion, but stick around and join the discussion, you’re sure to learn something (and contribute!)

The latest news from our (recently) beloved Apple is that (amazing) Sandbox technology is on the horizon, which will run App Store apps inside their own Sandboxes. Here are few words about sandboxing – it is basically a mechanism for computer to protect itself (and the user) from (potentially) malicious or misbehaving application that user wants to use. As security experts will tell you, there are plenty of supposedly useful applications which are just a (shameless) wrapper around virus delivery mechanism or an even simpler system that quietly looks at what you browsing to and captures user/pass you put into your (financial) website and silently sends it via the Internet to the perpetrator. After reading some interesting discussion on the subject, I decided to weigh in here.

Granted – I am as paranoid as the next guy, and you should ALWAYS know the source of Any Application you download and (even try to) run. And the issue is complex, as so far all I have seen is that users become mostly victims of increased security – how often did you call your bank because you forgot your password?! In fact, I once left a financial institution because their login procedure became 5 screens long, with pictures, symbols, pins, sentences, etc…

The punch line: if Apple Approves an App and grants it Sandbox Permissions, but later we discover that App still had Malicious Password stealer hidden deep inside? I say – We Sue Them! They performed a Paid service — developers Pay to get into App store and share cut of profit. Given that the aforementioned paid service had Primary purpose of Vetting an app for our (naive) users’ consumption, I see door wide open for Class Action. Seriously, given the size of Fiasco (millions of accounts stolen?), no 100 page License agreements we all carelessly click through will protect them.

So, Apple – for your own good – let the users free! Or better yet – Respect that they (sometimes) know what they’re doing!

Anyhow, let’s recap the contenders

• Kindle – Interestingly, I don’t own any – and yet I have Tons of options for reading Kindle books (iPhone, Tablet, PC, Mac, etc) and already own many books on the platform. This is truly an achievement, which I applaud Amazon for!
• Nook – I really have nothing against them, but I have virtually no prior books on the platform and no dedicated eInk reader. Still, their readers looking better all the time and they caught up to Amazon with Nook software reader being available on most platforms. Good job, B&N!
• Kobo – Once partner of failed Borders, is an independent maker of eInk devices and the software platform. They are also present on many platforms and ironically I do own that eInk reader I picked up at Borders closeout. We use it once in a while, but who knows about long term prospects?

Not in the running:

• iBooks – Apple insists on closed platform ways – show me Android iBooks reader? Or how about PC reader? And not even corporate discount Nope, no go…
• Google Books – Serious contender and I am glad to see they have the book available. Brand is strong with this one, but I just don’t know if this is another “Google experiment” with books, or are they in it for the long haul? Plus, no native clients on laptops detracts from reading experience a bit – although Web reader is mighty enticing. In fact, I almost forgot about this option…
• Microsoft eReader – Um, anyone remembers this one exists? Exactly…
• Adobe Digital Editions – I don’t even know if any store uses this… In fact, Adobe themselves didn’t post this free eReader on their Download page – seriously?!?!

So, chime in – help me decide. Weigh in your Pros and Cons and tell me where you got this book, and why! And yea, I am so crippled with this decision that I walked into retail store to buy Real hardcover. But then I got sticker-shock – where B&N employee politely explained to me that their pricing is completely different from their own Web pricing and That’s that.

Seriously – we have industry behemoths trying to set platform trends for ages to come, where should we vote with our cash – and WHY ON EARTH would publisher insist on fixed pricing!!?! I am certain everyone would be selling this one At A Loss at this ciritcal platforms’ junction, given a chance.