technological disappointments

[cellio]

I don't care about iPhone at all, but the announcement of AppleTV caught my interest. I'd probably pay $300 for a device that lets me dump the cable service (depending on what content costs). I don't watch a lot of TV but I don't want to watch what I do watch on my computer; this fills a real need for me. Alas, it appears (from Apple's site) that my plain old TV, bought about five years ago, can't talk to this new box; they use the words "widescreen" and "enhanced definition", neither of which I think applies to my TV (assuming "widescreen" means 16:9 instead of the standard 4:3 aspect ratio -- why that should make a difference when they could just letterbox is beyond me). They can make an allowance for wired networks but not for recent-but-not-current TVs? Bummer.

Spam subject line of the day: "mollusk suffrage". On consideration, giving them the vote probably wouldn't make things worse.

I cleaned out my spam traps last night; the problem has definitely gotten worse recently. There's more spam and the distribution (or performance of various filters) has changed:

My filters, in order of firing, are:

• Pobox bounce: 200 messages/day (these generate unknown-address notices)
• Pobox trap: about 75 messages/day
• Procmail 1 (SpamAssassin score 7+ and a few specific targets): about 100 messages/day
• Procmail 2 (aka "maybe spam"; gets about 5% false positives): about 10 messages/day

I haven't been keeping careful records, but I think about 15-20 messages/day get through all that to my inbox.

Gak. That's about 400 pieces of spam per day aimed at my mailbox, of which about a third are getting through to my mail host. (I want this stuff to be caught as far upstream as possible.) Pobox used to catch a higher proportion; in addition, the ratio of Pobox bounce:trap used to be about 5:1, not the current ~3:1. I can't say that this is a Pobox degradation, though, as it wasn't long ago that I got about 100 pieces of spam a day, total. Pobox is presumably trapping everything it used to and a good deal more, but the spammers have gotten more clever. (I should write a procmail rule to catch any message that begins with an image.) I used to browse the traps about once a week looking for legitimate mail, but even with search that's getting impractical. I no longer inspect the bounce trap at all.

The spammers have caused email reliability to revert to that of the UUCP days, when there was a chance that your legitimate message just plain never got there. Thanks, guys.

Comments

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

(I should write a procmail rule to catch any message that begins with an image.)

I know...it seems so obvious to me that those should be caught...especially since I NEVER get images by e-mail (I mean from non-spammers).

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

I'm also surprised the Apple TV assumes you have a widescreen TV. I don't see why it would have cost them so much to add connections for s-video or composite video output, or at the very least for a switch that converts from 16:9 to 4:3 aspect ratio. (The component cables at least don't care how the signal they carry will be interpreted.)

[sui66iy.livejournal.com]

Re: Apple TV. An alternative you might consider is buying a video iPod. Apple sells a cradle with an s-video and line-out connection, so you can put your iPod in the cradle and connect it right to your T.V. It's both pricier and less convenient than the Apple TV (you have to sync via USB), but, on the other hand, it's also a portable video device and an iPod. There's also a remote control for the iPod cradle, but it's really only good for volume and pausing. It won't let you select shows.

I can attest that it's nicer to leave the cradle hooked up to the TV than to be constantly plugging in a laptop to your TV. And, frankly, I don't intend to move to HD until a variety of components get cheaper, so I won't be getting an Apple TV either.

[dsrtao]

If you just want a box that will show downloaded stuff on TV with a minimum of fuss, let me suggest a DVD burner in your computer and a DVD player that supports the DivX/XviD codecs. Then you just copy your bittorrented video files over to a disc and put them in the player hooked to your TV.

Here's one that also will take a USB key and play files from that:
amazon link

OT

[siderea]

I've been meaning to ask -- perhaps you already addressed this and I missed it -- you took a Mac laptop on your trip with you, yes? How did that work out for you?

[xthlcm.livejournal.com]

I use a D-Link DSM-520. It streams video and audio wirelessly from any media-server-equipped computer (you can use any UPnP-compatible media server; I use TVersity).

As for content, well, with iTV or an iPod you get the Apple Store. But that also means you get restricted content in a crappy resolution that's DRM'd out the wazoo and locks you into Apple products forever. The DSM-520 is compatible with PlaysForSure, so if you wanted to buy content from Microsoft you could. I just pull down the things I want to watch from BitTorrent; TVersity also does internet streams and can transcode pretty much anything into an MPEG2 stream.

Did my message get past your spam filters?

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose, given that you post your email on a public page, I should attempt to follow-up on the email I sent you.

The message was regarding your tech writing abilities.

The email sent was from the domain respect101.com - Did you receive it?

Best Regards
Frank