LookIt

This is why I miss DHL for local delivery

UPS's routing system is badly broken. That was supposed to be two-day delivery, and the package was marked as such. Notice that it takes more than two days to get out of NV, then goes through Sacramento twice.

Facebook attracting more scammers

Facebook is pretty attractive to scammers because it is fairly easy to make up an identity and look real. This one seems pretty odious: collecting personal information on incoming college freshmen. I am particularly sensitive to it because my older niece is one of those, and she already joined one of the groups in question.

Reboot needed

I used to make fun of Microsoft for their updates to non-essential software that, after installation, required a reboot. Apple has now trumped them. The recent update to Digital Camera Raw Compatibility "extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto ’08 for the following cameras" and "also addresses issues related to specific cameras and overall stability". And it requires a reboot.

Note to Apple: this suggests that someone has messed up badly on determining which components of the operating system are critical to its operation.

Update:Post-Apple Chuqui explains it as a documentation error.

bittorrent.com again encouraging piracy

This is just lame. A few years ago, bittorrent.com supported a search engine whose results encouraged pirating of copyrighted works, even for artists who allow free trading of their live recordings. Then the axed the search and tried selling content from the site that you shared, not downloaded. Now that has failed, and they have revived the pirate-friendly search service.

Proof that their search is pirate-friendly is easy to find. Use their engine to search for torrents of "Bob Dylan", who encourages trading of tapes of his live shows. The first torrents on the list are rips of his commercial albums, not the dozens of legal torrents of his shows. The same is true for many other of the thousands of artists who encourage sharing of their live shows but try to make money off of albums: the bittorrent.com search engine returns the pirated torrents first or mixed in with the legal torrents.

bittorrent.com's VCs may be getting antsy for some return on their investment. Suddenly switching back to encouraging piracy as a business model may not be the most effective way to do that.

More bailouts for the rich

The idea that Tesla Motors needs taxpayer funds disturbs me. Under no circumstances should typical taxpayers be bailing out a manufacturer whose clientele are only the rich.