Category: Web/Tech

Got back from the 4th annual Catholic Answers cruise yesterday.

It was a long, rewarding, and exhausting trip. Things went very well. We were particularly pleased with how well the personal interaction with and among the attendees went this year.

It was a special treat to meet a couple of folks on the cruise who identified themselves as readers of the blog!

More on the trip in the next few days.

Blogging may be a little slow today (Monday) while I recover (I’m writing this Sunday night, per my usual practice), but I’ll make sure to get a few posts up.

Muchas gracias to my co-bloggers for helping to fill the gap while I was gone!

Available now for an iPod near you: Vatican documents, which can be downloaded to your very own portable MP3 player.

"In the beginning there was… Madonna. Now you can also download Pope Benedict XVI into your iPod.

"Inspired by Vatican documents that called on Church officials to exploit the full potentials of the computer age, the Holy See’s official broadcaster, Vatican Radio, is ‘podcasting’ audio content to any of the world’s one billion plus Catholics who own a portable MP3 player.

"The service, launched with little fanfare during the summer, has proved unexpectedly popular.

"’It has been a success right from the start,’ says Jean-Charles Putzolu of the Vatican Radio’s web team."

GET THE STORY.

I’m no techno-geek but I did a bit of Internet fishing to try to find the Vatican’s podcast service. If you are a techno-geek and if you want to start listening to Vatican podcasts, I think you need to go to the site of Vatican Radio.

Before I became a blogger, I used to be annoyed by weblogs that did not offer comment capability. By golly, I believed it the positive duty of blogmasters to offer me space on their sites to comment on their commentary. (Not really, but I’m working up to a rant here, so some hyperbole here and there is part of the game.)

Then I became a blogger. And while I love the great comments I often receive, even the ones that disagree with my brilliant insights (read, hyperbole again), the nasty ones are the bane of my otherwise happy existence as a co-blogger here at JimmyAkin.org.

Take today. I come back on a Monday, after a four-day weekend due to illness (much better now, thanks), and am going through my email. Typepad sends notice of when my posts receive new comments. I always know something’s up when I receive comments on old posts. Many are very kind, just like the original comments, but it is the old posts that often draw the weirdos. They figure they can spray graffiti on the site and get away with it if they target the old posts. Today I spent twenty minutes fighting with Typepad technology to erase several nasty — and I do mean nasty — comments from an old post from August and then to close commenting on the post.

After that, I gained a new appreciation for bloggers who refuse to go to the trouble and simply kill the comboxes.

As you read this, I should be in or on my way to Mexico for Catholic Answers’ annual apologetics cruise.

Contrary to a popular impression, this is NOT a vacation for me or the other Catholic Answers folks who are going.

While enjoyable, these cruises are HARD WORK for us, frequently with us being up until after midnight and then awake and on the go by 7 a.m.

We really knock ourselves out trying to be available for the attendees–in talks, in personal discussions and meetings, etc.

After a week of having to be "on" constantly during my waking hours, I’m ready for a break.

That being said, I really enjoy going, and it’s always great to meet and interact with supporters of the ministry–particularly those we get to know especially well because they come back year after year.

Now: What does this mean for the blog?

Well, it means I won’t be able to do my blog posts the night before, so I may not be able to blog responses to e-mail until I get back.

I may be able to slip in a few live blogs depending on how well my electronics synch up from Mexico.

I also have pre-written at least some posts for every day this week (which was why blogging last week was a tad lighter than usual).

And, as always, I invite my co-bloggers to let fly with anything they’ve been wanting to say. Here’s a BIG thanks to them in advance!

So don’t fear: The cruise doesn’t mean the blog will go on hiatus for a week!

If any readers are planning to be on the cruise, I look forward to meeting you (as I may be doing even at this moment). If other readers would like to come next year, I look forward to meeting you then! It’ll be great!

I mean, does he think I’m Montel Williams or something?

If now, why would he lie to me like this?

You see that "Updates are ready for your computer" balloon?

I hate those. They pop up annoying ALL THE STINKING TIME–unless you tell the system to simply STOP alerting you when updates for the OS are ready.

The TOTALLY IDIOTIC thing is that they pop up even when there AIN’T any updates ready for your computer!

Like in this case.

I mean, an update had JUST BEEN INSTALLED, so it was completely up to date unless Microsoft released a new update in the last few minutes.

Only that’s not what’s causing this balloon to pop up.

How do I know?

Because the computer IS NOT ON THE INTERNET. In fact, the cable to the Internet ISN’T EVEN PLUGGED IN.

There is therefore NO WAY FOR MICROSOFT TO HAVE NOTIFIED MY COMPUTER THAT THERE IS A NEW UPDATE.

So Bill Gates is just lying to me like I’m Montel Williams.

And this isn’t the only time that’s happened. I’ve observed exactly the same phenomenon multiple times on multiple computers.

BILL, STOP IT! Didn’t you ever hear the story of the boy who cried "wolf"? That’s PRECISELY what you’re doing to millions of Windows users. You lie to your customers with so many false "Updates are ready" balloons that they simply turn off the update system and go without updates–sometimes important ones.

You’ve GOT TO stop lying to your customers this way. It’s INSANE.

For some time I’ve wondered what happens to people with iPods who have a computer die on them. I figured that–logically–there would be a function in iTunes that would allow you to attach the iPod to a new computer and switch the iPod’s authorizations so that it only works with the new computer. Then you could upload the songs from the iPod to the new computer and the old one would be deauthorized.

NOPE.

Not only is there NOT a way to do this, Apple Computers (makers of the ever-so-special Macintosh) has gone OUT OF ITS WAY to PREVENT folks from doing this.

People designed helper programs to allow you to get music off the iPod in such situations, and Apple put its programmers to work disabling the features that the helper programs worked on.

Here’s what the user-championscorporate sellouts at Apple expect to happen if you have a computer die or get stolen or whatever:

1. You get a new computer and load iTunes onto it.
2. You attach the iPod to the new computer.
3. You tell iTunes to switch the iPod’s authorizations to the new computer and authorize iTunes to WIPE OUT ALL THE MUSIC ON THE IPOD!!!
4. You spend endless hours re-loading your entire music collection from CD.
5. You spend endless dollars re-buying the songs that you previously bought from the iTunes music store.

AS IF!

Fortunately there are still helper applications that will let you do the sensible thing and get the music off the iPod to replace what you lost when your former hard drive was lost or stolen.

But you don’t need them.

I’ve just reanimated an iPod-iTunes relationship without the use of such applications, and I’ll tell you how.

It’s remarkably easy and you don’t need anything other than the iPod, the cable you use to connect it to your computer, and the computer itself.

Continue reading “Jimmy Akin, iPod Reanimator”

The problems with my computer were sufficiently grave that I determined it was time to buy a new one, so I did.

Will try to suck the data off the old one and (if possible) get it repaired to use as a back-up, but I am now back up to speed blogging. (I even have a good chunk of this week’s entries written in advance.)

Am still getting my old programs installed on the new one and figuring out what it’s individual quirks are since it’s a different model than my previous one.

Spent more than an hour Saturday morning trying to figure out what the speakers that had been working the night before were no longer emitting sound.

Did all kinds of troubleshooting. Could see that the unit was trying to produce sound (sound programs were displaying graphical wave formations or otherwise behaving as if they were producing sound), the speakers just weren’t emitting any. All the software seemed to be working. It seemed like a mechanical device problem.

It was.

Turned out that the new computer has a rotating volume control on the front of the unit near the touchpad and my thumb had apparently set it to zero without me realizing it was there.

D’OH!

That’s an hour of my life I won’t get back.

Having a physical volume control on the front of the unit is a handy thing–IF YOU KNOW IT’S THERE.

I’m sorry, folks, but my computer was very, very sick last night and I spent all evening babying it, trying to get it well, and so I was unable to do any blogging.

I may be able to do a bit this morning, but can’t promise anything given how ill my computer has been.

I think it caught the flu from someone at Mass.

In a story that has been making waves throughout St. Blog’s Parish, one Catholic high school has decided that enough’s enough and it is going to crack down on its students … by banning students from blogging, not just on school computers on school time but even from the comfort and privacy of the kids’ own homes.

"When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one area Catholic school principal.

"It’s an open invitation to predators and an activity Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

"Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

"In the arena of unregulated online communities, which has largely escaped the reach of schools, Pope John appears to be breaking new ground. While public and private schools routinely block access to non-educational Web sites on school computers, Pope John’s order seeks to reach into students’homes.

"’I don’t see this as censorship,’ McHugh said this week. ‘I believe we are teaching common civility, courtesy and respect.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to the Curt Jester for the link.)

Dawn Eden of the Dawn Patrol has a post requesting opinion. Although I am not (yet) a parent or a Catholic school educator, here’s mine:

The policy stinks.

As others have pointed out, it is unenforceable, usurps parental authority within the parents’ own home, and does nothing to teach teens responsible use of the Internet. A letter to parents outlining the dangers; a rule forbidding blogging on school computers on school time; a policy disallowing students to name the school, school employees, or fellow students in an identifiable fashion on their privately-maintained blogs; and a student assembly to teach the students safe Internet habits may well have been far more effective.

That said.

If I were a parent of a student, I would require my child to obey the policy.

Catholics are not supposed to be rugged individualists with a me-the-Pope-and-Jesus worldview (although some American Catholics unfortunately appear to be formed by such a quasi-Protestant worldview). They are members of a larger community that inculcates the virtue of obedience to legitimate authority, religious and civil, in all things but those that are inherently sinful. Children should learn that while growing up may free them from that obedience to parents that is proper to childhood, it does not free them from the requirement of obedience to lawful authority. Practicing the virtue by obeying their parochial school’s authority can prepare them for the obedience they may one day have to give to a bishop or religious superior.

Legitimate authority may make prudentially unwise decisions. Granted. But parents who place the value of their child’s freedom to express himself on the Internet while under parental supervision over and above the value of teaching their child the virtue of Christian obedience — even when it’s difficult to be obedient to a prudentially unwise rule — do their child no favors. Far better, IMHO, to express to the school one’s displeasure with the policy while refraining from bad-mouthing the school to the child and requiring the child to follow the policy while it’s in effect.

JIMMY ADDS: Much of what I am about to say would be moot because I am a strong advocate of homeschooling and would not plan to put my children in an outside-of-the-home school, but here goes. . . .

I concur with everything Michelle said about the badness of the policy, and I respect her opinion regarding how she would handle the issue in her family. That’s a matter of parental choice. In my case, I would do things differently. Since the school has no legitimate authority over what the child does at home (that’s the parents’ domain), I would use the situation as an opportunity to teach the child the difference between obedience to legitimate authority (mine) and resistance to illegitimate authority (the school’s telling him what he can and can’t do on the Internet at home). I would therefore require my child to ignore the policy. (I would also explore taking action against the school, such as having recourse to the diocese.)

If the child wants to blog that would be fine with me–AND we’d have to face the issue of blogging anonymously to avoid the school policy–BUT no posts would go up without prior parental authorization of them (which would be a household rule irrespective of the school’s policy). If left unsupervised, kids say things that they shouldn’t, and in the electronic age they need to learn what is acceptable to say on the Net and what is not. In the process of parental reviewing and approving of posts, the child would learn the difference (gossip about classmates and teachers being things that fall into the unacceptable category).

The Bush administration deserves a lot of kicking for the Harriet Miers nomination, but there’s one thing it’s doing right at present: Taking a firm line against internationalist yahoos who want to seize control of the Internet and give it to the most hypocritical, corrupt, ineffectual political body on the planet . . . the United Nations.

EXCERPTS:

Three lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Friday for the Internet’s core infrastructure to remain under U.S. control, echoing similar language introduced in the Senate earlier this week.

The resolution, introduced by two Republicans and one Democrat, aims to line up Congress firmly behind the Bush administration as it heads for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the global computer network.

"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today," said California Republican Rep. John Doolittle in a statement.

Countries including Brazil and Iran want an international body to oversee the addressing system that guides traffic across the Internet, which is currently overseen by a California nonprofit body that answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The European Union withdrew its support of the current system last month, and the issue is expected to come to a head at a U.N. summit meeting in Tunisia in November.

The Bush administration has made clear that it intends to maintain control.

What would the consequences be if we don’t hand over our Internet to the UN?

 

If a settlement is not reached, Internet users in different parts of the globe could potentially wind up at different Web sites when they type an address into their browsers.

And that would be unfortunate for people in other countries, but it’d be nothing compared to what would happen if control of the Internet were ceded to UN kleptocrats so that it could be turned into the same kind of sterling success as every other project the United Nations has touched in recent years.

U.S. lawmakers have backed the Bush administration’s stance, arguing that a U.N. group would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and enable repressive regimes to curtail free expression online.

Amen to that!

GET THE STORY.