Technology

NYC Subway Map

This entry was posted in Technology on by

If you live there or are planning to visit New York City this online subway map hacked onto Google Maps might be useful. For the rest it is another interesting application that might come to your city soon.
Via Metafilter.

Update: From Kim in the comments:

www.hopstop.com is the absolute best subway tool I’ve found. Door to door directions in 3 cities, including buses, subways, and walking.

I gave it a quick look and Kim is right. If you are in New York City, Boston, or Washington, DC. this is a great tool! I found it easier to use than the onNYTurf site linked above and though HopStop doesn’t give you a map of the subway system it quickly gives what appear to be excellent and detailed directions.

Firefox 1.5

This entry was posted in Mozilla Technology on by

Just when I didn’t need anything else to procrastinate with the Mozilla folks release Firefox 1.5. As usual I’ll break it in on my desktop at work which is a relatively low use machine before putting it on my laptop and other home machines.
The release notes are here and a comprehensive listing of new features and bug fixes is here.
Via Laurence.

What Time Is It?

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Well, the answer depends on context: you need a place reference.
So to make it a lot easier to answer the question, “What time is it around the world.” load up the Google Map based Gchart click on your place of interest and up pops the answer in an information balloon.
Via lifehack.

Don’t Play Sony CDs in Your PC

This entry was posted in Intellectual Property Law Music Technology on by

Better yet, don’t even buy them until Sony stops a whole bunch of bad behavior:

the EULA does not disclose the software’s use of cloaking or the fact that it comes with no uninstall facility. An end user is not only installing software when they agree to the EULA, they are losing control of part of the computer, which has both reliability and security implications. There’s no way to ensure that you have up-to-date security patches for software you don’t know you have and there’s no way to remove, update or even identify hidden software that’s crashing your computer.
The EULA also makes no reference to any “phone home” behavior, and Sony executives are claiming that the software never contacts Sony and that no information is communicated that could track user behavior. However, a user asserted in a comment on the previous post that they monitored the Sony CD Player network interactions and that it establishes a connection with Sony’s site and sends the site an ID associated with the CD.
I decided to investigate so I downloaded a free network tracing tool, Ethereal, to a computer on which the player was installed and captured network traffic during the Player’s startup. A quick look through the trace log confirmed the users comment: the Player does send an ID to a Sony web site.
….. (go to above link to see screen shots)
I dug a little deeper and it appears the Player is automatically checking to see if there are updates for the album art and lyrics for the album it’s displaying. This behavior would be welcome under most circumstances,…

Let’s see: hidden software, no easy way to uninstall, lying about how the software works, and,well, there may be more that we don’t know about yet. I do think no purchase is the right action: Boycott Sony music CDs!
And, I disagree with mark’s assertion that checking for album art and lyric updates “would be welcome under most circumstances.” It should only be welcome if the system owner specifically asks for it to happen and given the extremely limited value of this information on a day to day basis such requests should be very rare.
Via MU at Running Scared.