Iron Wil

In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Congress approved the wording of the Declaration on July 4 and then sent it to the printer. Whether John Hancock, as the elected President of the Second Continental Congress, or anyone else signed the document that day is unknown, because that document has been lost — presumably destroyed in the printing process.^[1] Hancock’s name and that of a witness do appear on the typeset broadside that was published within a few days. On August 2 in the following month, an engrossed document in script form^[2] was signed by Hancock and other delegates.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States, but is often also viewed as simply a summer festival, apart from its patriotic overtones.

read more at Wikipedia . . .

and have a safe and firework filled holiday.

iron wil

Recently, I have heard the likes of Leo Laporte talk about Jungle Disk and Amazon’s S3 service.

I have been looking for a ‘cloud’ back-up solution that was reasonable and viable as a solution. Yes, I know that Apple has the .Mac [now MobileMe] Service for 99$ a year; however, I wanted something a cheaper and easier to use.

You can pick-up Jungle Disk for 20$ and that includes all future updates and upgrades. Once you download and install the software package you need to enter you information. Next, head over to Amazon and the AWS site and sign in with your account information and then register for the S3 services. Once you are registered you will need to collect 2 Access Keys from Amazon. The first is your Access Key and the second is Your Secret Access Key.

With both of these, you can then connect to Amazon’s S3 service. I found it easier to add one directory at a time and let the upload take it’s time. It took 3 nights for me to upload 4 folders, Documents, Sites, Library, and Downloads. I have about 3.3GB of data from my MacBook that I have put on the cloud. It isn’t much, but it is my essential stuff.

Jungle Disk does a smart back-up.  You can schedule back-ups to run daily on down to every 5 minutes. I have mine set for 6 hours. If you have application like Mail or Firefox open it will error out on files that appear to be in use by the application. The application stays open and sits in the Dock. It would make sense for a Dashboard widget or a Menu Bar status icon to allow users quick access to the application monitor. Something like Caffeine or Time Machine.

It is worth the cost, which is on Jungle Disk’s main page here.

iron wil

Note: This will work for OS X, Windows, Windows Home Server, and Linux.

Yesterday, I went online to download Firefox 3 so that I could get all the latest and greatest version of my favorite browser . . . and wouldn’t you know I couldn’t get that page to load. This morning, I finally got to the webpage and was able to update all 3 computers with the latest version of Firefox. I did notice on SpreadFirefox that the count this morning was at 6.6 million downloads and this afternoon it is near 8.3 million downloads!

That is crazy awesome! I know it doesn’t even crack the forced IE hold on all those office computers or the anti-tech savvy groups that are moving online everyday. I have to say that I am impressed by the numbers.

I like the look for XP and OS X. I will have to install it on Vista later, when I am back on that system. My only real complaint is that a few of my plug-ins are now busted. I look forward to having Morning Coffee, Tab Mix Plus, Adblock, and Download in Tabs working again.

get it here, and enjoy the new browser.

iron wil

proof I got mine on Download Day.

In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; in August 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress.

Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June 14, 1937, Michigan became the first (and only) U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday.

36 U.S.C. § 110 is the official statute on Flag Day, however it is at the President’s discretion to proclaim officially the observance.

read more at Wikipedia.com. . .

and may patriotism live on.

iron wil

I find this to be an interesting issue. The original AllofMP3 has been offline for some time & MP3Sparks is the new website. The RIAA has really put the thumb screws on and enlisted Visa & Mastercard to help put the kibosh on those trying to spend money on the music being sold there. Personally, I like the site & service. It is one of hte few places that I think the price is fair.

Yeah, I just said that.

I have to be honest, I buy from iTunes and I have purchased music from both sites. I understand that the RIAA is having a hard time dealing with the transition to New Media Distribution. That is fine, but they have to realize that ‘their’ customers don’t want music to exist the same way it has in the past 100 years or so. The internet is here and the sneaker-net has always been around. They need to embrace and lead the movement into the digital frontier.

Forget DRM it is dead.

The sooner they understand that the better off we all will be. The ‘people’ or the ‘masses’ will always find a way to beat the systems they put in place. There will always be someone working on a way to crack, hack, rip, burn, and get that content into a DRM-free medium.

Personally, I think Apple’s FairPlay is pretty reasonable. I can burn the music & then if I want it in MP3 format I will have to rip it & that can be a lot of work. Especially since I have 2 Macs and an iPod; with more Macs & iPhones on the list for the next few years.

MP3 is the way music should be delivered and in the highest quality possible. It will never be as good as live; but recorded music has never been that good.

I expect that in 10 to 15 years it will be history and the world & the recoding industry will have moved on. For now the war wages on.

If you want the whole story see the Ars Technica article and make the hop to Bloomberg for more.

iron wil

Good morning y’all,

The latest version of OpenOffice fixes a security vulnerability. InfoWorld has a neat little article about it. Download the latest version here.

Peace out!

I have 10 Evernote invitations I am giving out. There is the possibility of more depending on how many people respond to my Pownce announcement.

First ten commenter’s get them. If I have any left from Pownce I will pass them out here.

iron wil