Google Bombing

This is something I haven’t heard about in a while. Saw a recent post about an evangelical website which some are now trying to get associated with the search term “Primitive Rubbish“. Will be interesting to see how this works out…

Printing Woes… – A follow-up

A few days ago I posted about the lack of printing compatibility as advertised by Apple between OS X & Windows. This has not changed. I have however gotten printing working now between the Mac and Windows. I did this in a rather convoluted way, but it works… The solution was to use LPD Unix Printing. This has to be installed as a Windows Component in Vista, and then manually configured in OS X. I found that OS X did not like the hostname of the Vista machine, and so I have now resorted to disabling DHCP and manually assigning IPs to the machines on the LAN here (about 6 machines) so that I can use the printer attached to Vista. Once it is set up in Vista, the computer’s IP entered in OS X as the lpd:// address, and the printers share name as the Queue name, it suddenly begins working.

While it is not as easy or fast as I would have liked, it is an acceptable compromise. That said I still feel Apple should update their website, or at least include something easy to find in the Support section of their website with detailed instructions on how to do this. I only figured it out having visited about ten 3rd party sites, and using some good old-fashioned trial and error…

Technology Sheep, or is that Lemmings?…

Since I began using technology, especially, but not exclusively, the internet I have noticed something. We are all sheep when it comes to technology. I say this because the culture that has grown up around technology is one of recommendation and to a certain extent, blind faith. I, for example, used to use Internet Explorer as my primary web browser, simply because I knew no difference. Upon recommendation from friends however, I almost instantaneously stopped using IE, and began using Mozilla’s Firefox browser, of which I am now a huge fan and couldn’t do without.

However it isn’t always like this, and it might not have been. Maybe it is just me, but I have a tendancy to move everything across instantaneously and in one go to the new system, such as when I started using Firefox over IE way back when, pushing the boundaries of what I do and seeing how the new system can enhance this. If this works well then I stick with it and that is that – if however it does not then I am left stranded and have to pick up the pieces, back-peddle and try to get back to where I was with the old system. This kind of blind leap of faith is the only way, in my opinion, to see whether the new system is up to what I need it to be, and as disruptive as it may be, it is necessary if the change is to be made.

This brings me back to the title of this post. Just like the Lemmings we jump off the cliff into the unknown based solely on the recommendation of a friend, colleague or trusted web personality. Sometimes we land on our feet, and even do so on better terrain than we were on before – but sometimes we land in the water and have to struggle to crawl back onto the old familiar platform we have known and loved for years….