Check out the Facebook chat I just had:

(03:28:00 AM) Andrew Hayes: hello
(03:28:12 AM) Andrew Hayes: how are you doing?
(03:28:57 AM) Chris Brunner: a little tired, you?
(03:29:13 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am not good at the moment
i am in a deep mess and i need your help
(03:30:34 AM) Chris Brunner: What can I do?
(03:31:42 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am stuck in London Got mugged at gunpoint
(03:32:15 AM) Chris Brunner: That’s horrible
(03:33:06 AM) Chris Brunner: I’m sorry to hear that
(03:33:33 AM) Andrew Hayes: all cash on me was stolen including cell phone and credit card
(03:33:50 AM) Andrew Hayes: i was injured…little bruises on my neck
(03:34:10 AM) Chris Brunner: is this a joke?
(03:34:50 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am really serious
(03:35:00 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am just freaked out
(03:35:19 AM) Chris Brunner: how are you using a computer?
(03:35:38 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am presently in a loocal library
(03:35:48 AM) Chris Brunner: which one?
(03:35:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: i have limited time here!!
(03:36:05 AM) Andrew Hayes: here in London
(03:36:18 AM) Andrew Hayes: i need your help urgently
(03:36:22 AM) Chris Brunner: …
(03:36:57 AM) Chris Brunner: what is it that you’re asking me to do?
(03:37:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: my return flight leaves in few hours time
(03:38:28 AM) Andrew Hayes: i am having problems settling the hotel i checked into and getting a cab to the airport
(03:38:54 AM) Chris Brunner: what can I do?
(03:40:17 AM) Andrew Hayes: i need you to loan me some money to sort my hotel bills and get a cab to the airport
(03:41:41 AM) Chris Brunner: sure, no problem. just get any of our mutual friends to vouch for your character and I will happily loan you cash via western union or moneygram
(03:42:26 AM) Andrew Hayes: you are all i got at the moment
(03:42:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: to help me out
(03:43:14 AM) Chris Brunner: of our mutual friends, whose phone number do you need? I will wake them up.
(03:43:28 AM) Chris Brunner: I know most of them personally
(03:43:35 AM) Andrew Hayes: i don’t have access to phone
(03:43:46 AM) Chris Brunner: surely someone in the library has a cell phone
(03:43:58 AM) Andrew Hayes: the muggers stole away my phone like i told u ealier
(03:44:05 AM) Chris Brunner: I will call you on that phone, and conference in a mutual friend who can vouch for you
(03:45:19 AM) Andrew Hayes: there is no phone in the library
(03:45:19 AM) Andrew Hayes: there is no phone in the library
(03:45:35 AM) Andrew Hayes: besides it is a local one!!
(03:45:50 AM) Chris Brunner: so? I will pay the international toll. it’s an emergency, right?
(03:46:42 AM) Andrew Hayes: yeah
(03:47:02 AM) Chris Brunner: okay, then give me the number to any phone in london where I can call you, and conference in a mutual friend.
(03:47:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: yeah
(03:48:06 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(03:48:13 AM) Chris Brunner: yes, of course
(03:48:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: i really need your help
(03:49:04 AM) Chris Brunner: I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to help you.
(03:49:46 AM) Andrew Hayes: i have limited time here
(03:50:17 AM) Andrew Hayes: as their computer is even faulty
(03:50:56 AM) Andrew Hayes: all i need from you is a loan of 600$
(03:51:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: to get on my flight
(03:51:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(03:51:13 AM) Chris Brunner: okay, how should I send it?
(03:51:37 AM) Andrew Hayes: all you need is my name and address
(03:51:43 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(03:52:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: do you know any western union outlet near you?
(03:52:08 AM) Chris Brunner: yes
(03:52:31 AM) Andrew Hayes: how long will it take you to get there?
(03:52:39 AM) Chris Brunner: about ten minutes
(03:52:40 AM) Andrew Hayes: as i have limited time here
(03:52:43 AM) Chris Brunner: but I will try to be fast
(03:53:21 AM) Andrew Hayes: should i give you the info
(03:53:34 AM) Andrew Hayes: you will need in sending the money?
(03:53:38 AM) Chris Brunner: yes. I will write it down
(03:53:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: Name:Andrew Hayes
(03:55:13 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(03:55:23 AM) Chris Brunner: don’t I need the address?
(03:55:48 AM) Andrew Hayes: Location: 30 Leicester Square. City, London. Country, United Kingdom
(03:55:53 AM) Andrew Hayes: got it?
(03:56:01 AM) Chris Brunner: got it.
(03:56:09 AM) Andrew Hayes: ok
(03:56:23 AM) Andrew Hayes: can you please leave now?
(03:56:57 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(03:57:03 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(03:57:41 AM) Chris Brunner: yes, I’m leaving now
(03:57:51 AM) Andrew Hayes: ok
(03:58:31 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there?
(03:58:41 AM) Andrew Hayes: i will be online waiting
(03:58:55 AM) Chris Brunner: wait, is it 600 USD or 600 pounds?
(03:59:26 AM) Andrew Hayes: pounds
(03:59:35 AM) Chris Brunner: okay
(04:01:15 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you still there?
(04:06:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: are you there??
(04:10:04 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(04:10:40 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??
(04:15:48 AM) Andrew Hayes: ??

Obviously, this is a scam. I’m guessing Andrew’s Facebook account was hacked. So, I called the London police and told them where the scammer will be trying to pick up the money that I didn’t send.

Facebookers beware.

If this happens to one of your friends, here’s the link to report it.

So for those who don’t know, I’ve moved into a new place in Birmingham. I randomly discovered Vtech DS6321-3, which basically uses Bluetooth to make your cell phone act like a land line connection. That’s attractive to me because I work from home, and a cordless phone is more comfortable to use for extended periods of time than a cell phone is. It also imports contacts from your cell phone, over Bluetooth, so people’s names show up when people call.

Anyway, it made me briefly consider getting a land line, and I stumbled across this page on AT&T’s website. Pretty funny.

My favorite reason listed is, “You need a way to call your cell phone when you lose it.” A close second is, “Your security system needs to be hooked up to something.”

Good stuff.

Are you trying to download and install Google Gears in Mozilla Prism using these or these instructions?

If so, you may have run into trouble finding the correct URLs for the Google Gears XPI. Let me help:

Linux: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-linux-opt.xpi
Mac: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-osx-opt.xpi

Enjoy.

It’s been ages since I’ve kept my blog up to date. If you’ve come to ChrisBrunner.com to see what I’m up to, your best bet would be to read my Twitter feed or check my Google Latitude widget to see where I am. The updates are sparse, but it’s more than you’ll find on the rest of my blog.

I look forward to sitting down someday soon to blog about the adventure that RCG and TIDS have been, but my phone keeps ringing, so it’ll have to happen on another day.

I’ve seen dozens of reports from various blogs and online news sites about which 3G network is faster. They all seem to have different results, and they areas that they test in are always extremely limited. So, I figured I would try to find test results from the most popular mobile speed test I know of — DSLreports.com.

Sure enough, they do publish the results. Here they are:

The difference between average speeds is marginal, but the lower latency that Sprint offers probably makes a huge difference.

I know people are going to post comments about how skewed these results are for all kinds of reasons, and they’ll be mostly right, but in the grand scheme of things, I’d be willing to bet that these results are more accurate than any one review that only surveys speeds in two or three states at a time.

Feel free to leave comments with your own experiences.

If you get all of your news from media outlets in the US, you're totally missing out. Podcast clients like Miro make it not only possible, but very easy, and very convenient, to get on-demand news from around the world. You pick and choose your content sources, and episodes just download automatically. I see content every day that I would never, ever see from the US media. One example from just a few minutes ago is this two-part interview between Josh Rushing and Michael Mullen about the US military strategy in Afghanistan. Just ask yourself while you watch: "Would anyone in the American mainstream media ever dare ask questions like this?" I will list the RSS URLs of some of my content picks in case you're interested in checking it out for yourself:

• Al Jazeera English 
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Qatari
• Description: One of the three largest English-language news channels worldwide.  It's a 24-hour English-language news and current affairs TV channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar.
• Russia Today
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Russian
• Description: Also known as RT, is a globally broadcast English-language news channel from Russia, and the first all-digital Russian TV channel.
• Press TV
• Feed URL
• Nationality: Iranian
• Description: An English language international television news channel, based in Tehran.  It has 26 international correspondents and more than 500 staff around the world.

These are just three out of about thirty content sources that I receive video from daily.  If you have one that you feel should be listed here, let me know.  Or, if you want to see my list of Technology or Libertarian content sources, let me know.

Cursing can have a “pain-lessening effect,” according to research from the school of psychology at Britain’s Keele University

Click here for the article, and thanks to Jason C. for the link!

Michael Moore has announced that his latest documentary will take on the free market — that is, the freedom to produce, buy, or sell whatever you want, to whomever you want, at whatever prices you want. This is pure evil, of course. Not because it benefits everyone involved, but because it makes some people wealthy. And, according to Michael, that’s a big problem for America.

Says Moore:

“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money. Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie.”

This is just dumb. As John Stossel begins to point out, it’s not the private sector that is “fleec[ing] the American people out of their hard-earned money,” it’s the government. Who robs Americans of half of their hard-earned income at gun point every single year? Who counterfeits endlessly to the point of causing massive and widespread malinvestment, job losses, inflation, and depressions? It’s certainly not the private sector. And it certainly has nothing to do with Capitalism.

(Note: This post was authored for the LRC Blog.)

The Cult of Scientology has taken over Google Adsense.

Right now, Google offers no way to prevent the ads for this cult from showing up all over your website. However, they say that in the meantime, they’re developing a category filtering tool.

It’s not available to the public yet, so in the meantime, you might consider Google’s competitor, the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Okay, I’ve to get this off my chest. The way GNOME’s NetworkManager determines whether it’s connected to the internet is so fucking dumb. Now that several apps rely on the online/offline status from NetworkManager, this causes all kinds of really annoying problems that often occur at the most inconvenient times.

Right now, NetworkManager just determines whether it has made a physical connection, and if it has, it thinks it’s on the internet, and if it hasn’t it assumes there’s no connection available.

So, there are to problems with this:

* Offline-but-not-really - When I’m in the car, I have two options for connecting to my phone for internet access. I can either turn my phone into a WiFi Ad-Hoc node, and use it as a gateway for my laptop. Or, I can use Bluetooth to create a PAN and do basically the same thing. Either way, I have to set up the connection from the command line on my laptop with one or two commands. Of course, when I do this, NetworkManager has no knowledge of the connection and all of my GNOME apps that rely on it think there is no internet connection. This gets really, really old.

* Online-but-not-really - So the second problem is captive portals. For example, I’m typing this from a Panera Bread. I turned on my laptop, NetworkManager saw the open WiFi connection, and it automatically connected. Great, except NetworkManager now thinks it has a working internet connection… but it doesn’t, because I have to pop open a browser window and hit “Agree” before I actually have internet access.

The solution to this is so fucking easy… just ping! Each second, or every three or five seconds, NetworkManager should just try to ping a host like google.com… if you get a response, you’re online. This way, it doesn’t matter how you’re connected, or whether or not there’s a captive portal in the way… Why is this so hard?