Archive for December, 2009

CBS.com video player not working?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

The CBS.com video player requires that you see an ad served by doubleclick.net before you can watch full videos. If you are having problems viewing videos on CBS.com, then I recommend you disabling any software feature that blocks doubleclick.net from serving that advertisement.

In my case, I had blocked doubleclick.net at my router. To view CBS videos, I had to permit the ad to be served.

The reason seems to be that the CBS player integrates the ad, so that if the ad doesn’t play, then the start of the video will not trigger. This appears to be different than some of the other network sites, where you can block their ads while the featured video still plays.

I haven’t looked into a way of still blocking the ad served before CBS videos, but I suspect it can be done. Perhaps the ads could be blocked in Google Chrome or Firefox with some javascript modification while allowing the featured video.

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Posted in technology | 5 Comments »

More on Minarets

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Criticism about the recent ban on minarets in Switzerland from scholars who live in a country that doesn’t allow churches or synagogues. Yeah, that’s who I turn to for opinions on religious tolerance and liberty.

Riyadh: Several prominent Saudi Islamic scholars and preachers lambasted the recent Swiss referendum to impose ban on the construction of mosque minarets in the country.

I’m sure they did. But they didn’t lambaste the marriage of adult men to nine-year-old girls, I bet.

Speaking to Gulf News, they said that this is another evidence of the West’s antagonism towards Islam and such moves detail the serious initiatives being undertaken for holding dialogue among followers of various religions in different parts of the world.

Any churches or synagogues there in Riyadh yet? Didn’t think so. (more…)

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Posted in religious liberty | 4 Comments »

Lawyers & text messaging

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

I have been thinking more about text messaging and its use by attorneys to communicate with clients. It seems there is a large subset of lawyers who believe that text messaging should not be used to communicate with clients.  I can understand why, but I am not sure that I agree.

The argument against lawyers text messaging their clients is several-fold:

  1. short messages are easily misconstrued
  2. text messages are not easily preserved
  3. short messages cannot convey enough information to the client (or from the client to the lawyer)
  4. text messaging is scary and unfamiliar technology
  5. text messaging grants the client too much access and too immediate of access to the attorney

I’m certain this is not an exhaustive list. But it is a hefty enough list to dissuade lawyers from using text messaging technologies. Some of the concerns, I think, are legitimate (or at least borderline so), while others I am more skeptical of. (more…)

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Posted in technology | 7 Comments »

Windows ‘black screen of death’ workaround

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

If you’re getting the so-called ‘black screen of death’ as described in the BBC News article here, then try this workaround.

When you restart your computer after a black screen incident, try pressing F8 repeatedly right as the machine turns on.

Normally, this would allow you to boot into the various operating system start options (like safe mode). I have found that this allows Windows to start normally, though it leads to another unusual bug where hammering F8 boots up the machine normally instead of giving you the system start options.

I’ll see if I have a few minutes to post a video on it later. Good luck.

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Posted in technology | No Comments »