Monthly Archives: May 2005

iSight & iChat

When I make video connections using my iSight in iChat, I get strange errors like:

No data has been received for the last 10 seconds.

I have no idea what this means. This problem only arose after I switched to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). I get this in situations where I never had a problem before. I don’t think it is a firewall issue because I can connect okay; it only seems to trigger after being connected for a little while (anywhere between a few seconds and a few minutes).

Ideas?

Court nixes FCC’s broadcast flag

Rather than try to rehash something that I don’t know enough about to describe without making some errors, I’ll point you to a few places that discuss the high impact court ruling.

Essentially, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC had no rights in forcing manufacturers to include copy protection technology (specifically, the “broadcast flag”) that was intended on limiting unauthorized distribution of over-the-air TV on the internet. However, introduction and mandate acceptance of such broadcast flag would have prevented much innovation in the area by essentially blocking out Open Source/Free Software from using digital television by making the drivers difficult or impossible to write for.

Cory Doctorow has a good write up of the subject at Boing Boing: V-TV DAY: WE WON THE BROADCAST FLAG FIGHT! I suggest you take a look, as this ruling is huge in terms of consumer electronics for the next few years.

As it stands now, the FCC can regain this power to institute a broadcast flag only if congress explicitly passes a law granting them that authority. But no politician wants to pass a law breaking the TV’s of their voters. With any luck, it’ll be a dead issue.

Brad on a Donkey

Brad on a Donkey

Brad on a Donkey, Originally uploaded by Brad Froehle.

You should check out Flickr, as it now has all of my pictures on it. Like this one, of me on a Donkey outside of Old City Hall in Boston, MA. You can also see a set of all the pictures from my trip to Boston.

I’ll try to do a good job posting notes here when I upload cool things to Flickr, you should also subscribe to the RSS feed to get instant updates.

ML-1710 & Tiger

Has anybody gotten their Samsung ML-1710 printer to work with Tiger?

I’ve installed the drivers from Samsung’s website (for Mac OS X 10.3), but they do not seem to show up when I add the printer.

Stressed, Pre-Finals Week Edition

With finals week rapidly approaching, I’m beginning to feel a little stressed about this semester.

I have all of my homework done for the rest of the semester, save for the Final Report in Methods of Experimental Physics (MXP). That paper is due on Friday, a rapidly approaching deadline!

However, I should be mostly home free after Friday — I only have two finals, one on Thursday and one on Friday.

Tonight wrapped up my Latin Dance class, something that I will definitely miss. Joy (the instructor) and I were talking afterwards — she asked what I was taking next year and then proceeded to suggest Swing Dance. Funny that I already signed up for that one. After class 20 or so of us headed over to Famous Dave’s for Salsa night. We stayed for a little under two hours, leaving pretty early because everybody has stuff to attend to.

So far 4/7 classes have wrapped up completely:

  • Latin Dance
  • Physics Seminar
  • Pepband
  • University Bands
  • Methods of Experimental Physics: Still have to finish that pesky report.
  • Analysis: Just a final exam.
  • Electricity and Magnetism: final exam.

Flickr Pro

I bought a Flickr Pro account a few days ago and went nuts uploading files, maxing out my 2GB limit for the month of April and using 10% of May’s allowance while uploading over 1700 pictures.

If you aren’t a friend or family, some 400 of those won’t be initially visible to you. If you are a Flickr user already, leave a message here and I’ll add you as a friend. If not, either leave your email and I’ll send you a password to get in, or sign up for Flickr and leave your screenname.

I’ve also put together about 30 photo sets that should be interesting to browse.