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PBR is $9 at new Yankee Stadium!

The “new” Yankee Stadium is almost open for business… and guess what? They’ve replaced many of the “Beers Around The World” stalls with “Retro Beer” ones instead. These new stalls will sell “hipster” beers like Pabst, Ballantyne, Schlitz and Schaefer. I can’t speak for the other beers, but I do know that the 24 oz. cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon are going for the obscene price of $9 each, an 800% markup over what my local convenience store charges for the same product.

PBR at NYS

Of course, this might actually be a “bargain” if the new stadium is charging $6 for a 12oz. Bud draft. At the very least, buying 24oz. of beer at a time should cut down on the amount of time you stand in line. But still…

Click here to read about it on a “New Yankee Stadium” blog.

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Windows XP and local DFS Shares

In this post, I talked about Distributed File System (DFS), a technology that lets you combine disparate file shares into one “virtual” share that can be shared out to all users. So, for example, if you need to share ten folders off of seven different servers, you can opt to create a DFS share containing all of those shares, instead of mapping a drive letter to each individual share.

You might, however, encounter a problem with Windows XP-based PCs trying to connect to a local share via DFS. In SP2, Microsoft changed the way Windows XP handles loopback connections; this might cause a user to receive a “network path not found” error when trying to access a local share hosted on DFS.

If other users can access the share, and if the share can be accessed locally via UNC path (\\computer\share), then the fix should be easy:

1) Fire up Regedit.

2) Go to HKLM > System > CurrentControlSet > Services > Mup > Parameters.

3) Create a new DWORD value called “EnableDfsLoopbackTargets” (without the quotes).

4) Give it a value of 1.

5) Reboot the computer.

After the reboot, the local user should now be able to access the local share via DFS without that pesky error message.

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The Revolt Against TWC Begins…

Last year, Time Warner Cable’s RoadRunner division began testing “consumption based” Internet service in Beaumont, Texas. In corporate-speak, “consumption based” is a polite euphemism for “capped bandwidth”. In Beaumont, new TWC customers were given a paltry cap of 40GB a month. TWC has since rolled their “test” out to several other markets, and has also played with the caps, in some cases making them as small as 5GB/month.

5GB/month might be fine for older couples that use the Internet mainly for surfing a few web pages and emailing pictures of their grandkids. But for “digital families” that use streaming video services like Hulu or Netflix, that back up their computers using an online service like Mozy, that use a non-cable company telephone service like Vonage, that have kids that use Xbox Live or some other gaming service, that use VPN or RDP to connect to their corporate networks… well, metered bandwidth simply won’t work.

It might be one thing if TWC was offering a reasonable pricing package for these wimpy Internet plans. After all, it is only fair for grandma and grandpa to pay $9.99/month for using a mere 1GB of bandwidth, right? Wrong. From the looks of things, TWC appears to be prepared to offer a super-crippled 5GB/month plan for a tiny discount (say, $29.99/month) while at the same time, they want to jack up the prices for heavy users to $150/month (or more).

Let me also point out that Comcast – perhaps the most reviled company in America – has had bandwidth caps for some time now… and their cap is 250GB/month. TWC hasn’t mentioned what their “final cap” might be, but consider this: if TWC and Comcast both charge $44.95 a month for high speed Internet, and if TWC goes with a 40GB/month cap, Comcast customers will pay 18¢ per GB per month, while TWC customers will pay $1.12 per GB per month… for the exact same product.

So… why is TWC doing this? There are two reasons.

First, Time Warner (and other cable companies) initially “oversold” their broadband capacity. It costs a lot of money to run fiber optic cables and set up an Internet infrastructure. The only way TWC (and the others) could make it cost effective was to have far more customers than the network could support. Back in 1997, when web pages were small and bandwidth-intensive services like YouTube, Hulu and Bittorrent didn’t exist, this was an easy bet. But now that many people use their Internet connections 24\7 for one reason or another, TWC’s networks are groaning under the weight of all that traffic. By putting caps in place, TWC is hoping to coax (or force) people to stop using so much damn bandwidth, thus bringing their network back under control.

Secondly, Time Warner is rolling out a bunch of new services, and they want you to use them instead of a third-party. If you currently have Vonage or VoiceEclipse phone service, TWC wants to put a bandwidth cap in place to scare you into using their service. If you currently use Hulu to watch TV shows you might have missed, TWC wants to put a bandwidth cap in place to scare you into renting one of their DVRs. If you currently use Netflix’s new streaming service, TWC wants to put a bandwidth cap in place to scare you into using their Video On Demand service instead. Like most of life’s big questions, this all comes down to money, and this is as naked a money grab as every there was.

Thankfully, people are starting to take notice. New York Congressman Eric Massa (of Rochester, the site of TWC’s 5GB/month test) is mad as hell about it, and is looking into creating legislation that would ban bandwidth caps. Ars Technica has been on this story for a while, and just today published this piece, taking TWC to task for their half-truths and lies.

For my part, I can only say this: TWC, if you bring such caps to the Gastonia, NC market, here’s one customer that will switch over to AT&T’s U-Verse so fast it will rip a hole in spacetime!

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1,000th post!

This is the 1,000th post on jimcofer.com! Hooray!

1000 posts

Of course, 157 of those posts are cut-and-paste jobs from my old site, but still… it’s amazing to me that I’ve hit such a milestone in such a short time! As always, THANK YOU for reading jimcofer.com! I hope you’ve enjoyed the “fun” articles, and I hope the “tech” articles have either helped you solve some problem or made your “digital life” easier in some way.

Here’s to 1,000 more posts!

Jim

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Finding Free Music Online

Back in the late 90s, finding music online was easy – you just fired up Napster and downloaded away. Unfortunately, Napster was powered by a centralized server, which made it super-easy for the Music Police to shut it down. Since then, several alternatives have popped up, like Bittorrent and the Gnutella network (which powers several different programs, like BearShare, FrostWire, iMesh and LimeWire).

While all these technologies are great for finding specific songs or albums, they all kind of suck when it comes to simply browsing for new music. But fear not: one of the greatest resources for free music lies just under your nose: mp3 blogs.

(Author’s note: most Internet sites call blogs that offer links to free music “music blogs”. I tend to call them “mp3 blogs” to differentiate them from legitimate sites that discuss music. However, for the rest of this article, I’ll call them “music blogs” to stay in line with the rest of the Internet.)

Before we begin, let me first dispel you of the notion that these “music blogs” only offer a track or two from some indie band you’ve never heard of. While those types of blogs certainly exist, the blogs I’m talking about offer full albums from artists you’ve absolutely heard of.

So – how do these blogs work? Well, most of them are hosted on free blogging sites, like blogspot.com or wordpress.com. Some music blogs simply have lists of albums along with links to download the music from file-sharing sites like RapidShare, zSHARE, Megaupload, etc. Other blogs might include professional reviews of the album(s), along with a link to the band’s MySpace page. Still other blogs might focus on one artist at a time, giving a long history of the band in addition to numerous links to the band’s albums and singles. Some blogs focus on a particular type of music (“Jim’s Disco Blog”, “Jim’s New Wave Blog”), while others have a much more general approach (“Jim’s ‘Whatever’s In The Top 40’ Blog”). Some blogs appear to be written by people that are only interested in sticking it to The Man, while others (like a blog that deals only with the B-sides to 80s singles!) seem to be written by true fans that delight in bringing little-known music to fans all around the world. In short, there are literally thousands of music blogs out there, appealing to almost every taste under the sun.

Continue reading “Finding Free Music Online”

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AMAZING LIVES: Mary Phelps Jacob

This is a new feature of the History Blog: occasional pieces focusing on the extraordinary lives of people you might not have heard of before.

Every morning, millions of women around the world wake up and put a bra on. It’s an everyday task, something that few probably put much thought into. But the story of the woman that invented the modern bra is simply amazing.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Mary Phelps Jacob.

Born on January 30, 1891, Mary Phelps Jacob – known as “Polly” to her family – came into a world of power and privilege. Her family were direct decedents of William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, and Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. Although nowhere near as rich as the Rockefellers or Vanderbilts, Polly’s family nevertheless had enough money to own three large estates in New York City, Long Island and Watertown, Connecticut. But Polly grew up in an age when a family’s name was as important as their bank balance. Based on her last name, Polly was able to attend the best private schools, the most exclusive cotillions, the fanciest horse riding academies… even a garden party hosted by King George V in 1914.

In fact, it was Polly’s “coming out” party in 1910 that inspired her to create the bra. Before this, women were expected to wear uncomfortable corsets to support their busts – a social convention contrived 350 years earlier by Catherine de’ Medici, the wife of King Henry II of France. But a corset simply wouldn’t work with Polly’s choice of dress – a tight-fitting number with a plunging neckline. The corset’s whalebone stays stuck out of the top of her dress, and overall she looked like she was wearing a life jacket underneath the dress. Undaunted, Polly called in her maid, and the two of them took a pair of silk handkerchiefs and some pink ribbon and fashioned something resembling a modern bra.

Polly’s creation proved to be quite a hit with her friends and family members. But it wasn’t until a complete stranger sent Polly a dollar along with a letter begging for one of her bras that Polly realized that the bra could be a commercial success. Accordingly, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Polly the first American patent for a brassiere on November 3, 1914, and Polly went in to business under the name “Caresse Crosby”. But Polly didn’t have any interest in running a business, and she soon sold her patent to the Warner Brothers Corset Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut for a mere $1,500 (around $38,000 in 2018 dollars). Warner Brothers would make an estimated $15 million over the next thirty years with Polly’s patent.

Continue reading “AMAZING LIVES: Mary Phelps Jacob”

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Random Facts Dump

I keep a text file on my desktop with random facts I pull from the Internet. I always figure I’ll use them later on this site. They’ve been building up for a while now, so let me go ahead and dump them here:

– The 2006 independent film Zyzzyx Road is the lowest grossing American film of all time. Starring Leo Grillo, Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore, it officially earned $30 at the box office. In reality it actually only earned $20, because Grillo refunded the $5 ticket price to makeup artist Sheila Moore and a friend.

– In the 1984 presidential election, Ronald Reagan won every state except Minnesota… and he only lost that state (Walter Mondale’s home) by 3,761 votes!

– The British band Madness’ first 20 singles all made the Top 20 in the UK charts. In fact, from 1980 to 1986, there was a Madness single in the British charts in 214 out of 312 possible weeks. That’s staggering.

– Songwriting credits for Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” were credited to “Vincent Ford”, a longtime friend of Marley’s and the owner of a soup kitchen. Marley’s act insured that his friend (and his soup kitchen) would be financially stable for life.

Continue reading “Random Facts Dump”

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$1 trillion deficit!

WASHINGTON Reuters – The U.S. budget deficit almost hit $1 trillion during the first six months of this fiscal year which began on October 1, according to estimates released on Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

The government likely recorded $953 billion in red ink from October through March including $290 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which was to provide much-needed cash to struggling financial institutions, the CBO said.

Receipts during the six-month period dropped about $160 billion, or 14 percent, over the same period in fiscal 2008. Nearly half of the drop, $73 billion, came from a fall in corporate income tax receipts.

A trillion dollars. And no one is saying a word about it!

via U.S. deficit nearly $1 trillion in first half of FY2009.

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Quote of the Day

Queen Elizabeth’s speech to her troops at Tilbury, on the eve of the Spanish Armada (and their intended invasion of England):

My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.