1. I've needed to connect to my Android phone using developer tools through USB.
2. Install MagicJack.
3. Fix Microsoft Lifecam to work with my system again to video chat friends on Skype.

Getting my Windows 7 to read the Android phone was a minor PITA.  It worked in the end.

I needed to MagicJack to work.  Calling tech support *about* your cellphone is a hassle when your cellphone is the only number you have.  Skype voice, even if it sounds great to your friend on the other end on Skype, always sounds terrible to tech support.  My theory is that the call gets transferred at the other end of customer service from general to tech or advanced tech support over VOIP and the double sampling kills the quality.  MagicJack should also be susceptible to the same weaknesses as Skype, but I was desperate for a solution, and willing to give it a shot.  A MagicJack number is also good to have to support Google Voice, especially if you have more than one GV account.  Mobile numbers can only be used as such on one GV account.

I got it to work... on my Vista machine.  Windows 7 x64 was a problem no matter what I tried.  There are downloads for both firmware and the program on that MagicJack website.  The latter supposedly supports Windows 7.  I couldn't get Windows 7 to recognize the MagicJack.  I thought updating the firmware by plugging it into the Vista box and running the update and then plugging it back into the Windows 7 machine would work.  No dice.

Then my Microsoft Lifecam Cinema stopped working.  This device too also has a program update and a firmware update.  Both worked fine on the Vista machine.  Again, Windows 7 refused to recognize the webcam and install the drivers.

0/2 left me wondering if I did something to mess up my USB setup or if an update broke things.  Scouring the web and trying OLD solutions over and over -- for better or worse, Google likes long old threads on authoritative websites, like Microsoft Tech Social -- I got no closer than when I started.  (I didn't listen to the Microsoft support drones who are fond of telling you to reinstall the OS.)  I probably rebooted my computer two dozen times today, easily, in futile cycles of uninstalling and reinstalling.

Finally, I did a search on Microsoft's main tech support pages and found a USB hotfix for seemingly unrelated issues.  I figured that if something is broken with the USB, repairing with the latest USB system files could surely have collateral benefit.  I was right.

After applying kb 978258

USB devices that are connected to a computer may not work after the computer is idle for more than one hour Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2

My Windows 7 x64 machine was able to see and install the drivers for both MagicJack and the Lifecam.  (The Lifecam required uninstalling and reinstall and twiddling with the registry settings.)

Yay!   Let me know if this works for you.

$ sudo gem install do_mysql
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing do_mysql:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb install do_mysql
extconf.rb:3:in `require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError)
from extconf.rb:3

After much googling and trying other solutions like installing libmysqlclient16-dev, I stumbled upon Al Hoang's related problem and solution:

$ sudo aptitude install ruby-dev

Then

$ sudo gem install do_mysql
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed do_mysql-0.10.0
1 gem installed

Installing libmysqclient16-dev could have anticipated a problem that would have arisen later--it may or may not be necessary.

Sender: type@arlingtonvafcu.org

Arlington Virginia F C U system notify-unhandled exception . TOLL FREE 877 858 9026

Arlington Virginia Federal Credit Union happens to be legit and so is the domain of the supposed sender.  But how did this get onto my cellphone--and why??  The toll free numbers on the FCU website do not match the one in the text message.  When you call the TOLL FREE number, a synthesized voice asks you to verify your account by entering card numbers, passwords, account numbers, etc.  (I didn't have the patience to listen for more than few seconds.)

Phishing scam!

This FCU happens to be near me.  My best guess is that they harnessed the power of simple marketing or geographical databases or directories and wrote a script that blasts a SMS gateway with locally customized phishing messages directing everyone to the same automated toll free number.

Devious and sophisticated!

Who do you report a disembodied crime like this to?

* * *

The Credit Union knows about the scam and has put up an alert on their website:

!FRAUD ALERT!

Several new "phishing" and "SMiShing" attempts using Arlington Virginia Federal Credit Union's name have been detected.  While they are in no way related to the Credit Union, we want our members to beware ANY email, phone call or text message asking you to give out, or validate, your account information.  To protect yourself from "phishing" and "SMiShing" and other types of identity theft scams, simply don't give out your personal, private information to anyone... ever... over the phone, the Internet, your cell phone, etc... AVFCU will never call, email, text or contact you in any other way and ask you to provide your personal, private information to us. DON'T FALL FOR THESE SCAMS! Click here to read more.

Vishing and SMishing are the new variants of phishing.

Chapter 3, Discovering Groups

generatefeedvector.py

The main body of this file bombs on

 
title,wc=getwordcounts(feedurl)

because the URL http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/feed/ toward the bottom of

http://kiwitobes.com/clusters/feedlist.txt

no long returns an RSS feed. We could remove that URL from feedlist.txt, find the working RSS URL for techeblog, or make our code more robust to deal with this problem in general. To enable the last option, encapsulate getwordcounts in Python's error apparatus:

 
try:
   title,wc=getwordcounts(feedurl)
except AttributeError:
   continue

The variable feedlist in the line

 
frac=float(bc)/feedlist

is referenced but not initialized or computed before that.

The fix is initialize feedlist and increment it as each feedurl is processed:

 
feedlist = 0
for feedurl in file('feedlist.txt'):
    try:
        title,wc=getwordcounts(feedurl)
    except AttributeError:
        continue
    feedlist += 1
    wordcounts[title]=wc
    for word,count in wc.items():
        apcount.setdefault(word,0)
        if count>1:
            apcount[word]+=1

Lastly for Chapter 3, the string handling chokes on a character from one of the feeds that doesn't bridge the ascii and unicode worlds. I googled for a solution and came up with this one simple fix:

 
out = open('blogdata.txt','w')
out.write('Blog')

to

 
out = codecs.open('blogdata.txt','wb','utf-8')
out.write('Blog')

You must

 
import codecs

I'm not up to speed on unicode so don't ask me how it works; it works.

That's it for Chapter 3. More later as I make my way through the book. Btw, I just checked Toby's blog and found that you can download the source code.

Hi,

I'm writing to let you know about our decision to remove your review of Drew Advantage in O'Fallon, MO. Your review was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Customer Service team has determined that it falls outside our review guidelines: http://www.yelp.com/faq#great_review.

We review every situation with detail and care and take the removal of reviews very seriously. If you have additional questions about this policy, please contact us at http://www.yelp.com/contact.

Regards,
Kris
Yelp User Support

I checked -- not only did Yelp delete my review, they deleted every single one. I just checked again -- two fresh negative reviews have been posted since the deletions.

I can't blame Yelp for asserting themselves as alpha dog on their boards, but the truly fair solution is to remove the listing for Drew Advantage altogether because is it really a business anymore? With the notoriety of the Drew family in their community and the negative goodwill from being associated with them, what business in their right mind would today or ever? Can Yelp name a standing client of Drew Advantage?

Just in case it is not clear, Drew Advantage is a marketing company for small local businesses. They most likely send out those advertiser packs you get in the mail with coupons for pizza, dry cleaning, car washing, etc. What does this business have to do with the Yelp demographic anyway? My coupons were late in the mail? They don't come anymore? By implicitly coming down on the side of a now defunct B2B business, Yelp is risking a PR blunder for naught.

Meanwhile, I am the boss of me and I'm abstaining from posting reviews of DC area businesses on Yelp for six months.

Someone in a Facebook Group dedicated to the memory of Megan Meier found this picture of Curt Drew on his Coldwell Banker real estate agent profile:

Also, Yelpers have dug up information on Curt Drew's local business, Drew Advantage, including a list of businesses that advertise through it.

Brandon Antron Rolle, the man accused of killing Ronald Gentile in Miami last year finally goes to trial today.  The killing was the subject of a crime investigation show "48 Hours" that I saw on cable (probably in reruns) a few weeks ago.  Ronald Gentile was in Miami to see his son and was returning to his hotel after dropping the son off at work when he made a wrong turn in his rental car.  His stop to ask for directions turned into a mugging that became a murder.  The fingerprint lifted off the car belonged to Brandon Antron Rolle, a felon who had been released from jail only months prior.  Rolle was also identified as the man who tried to sell Gentile's driver's license.

The murder made national news and reports about it could be found on a handful of websites but nothing about the disposition of the accused could be found.  What happened to the accused?  Looking into the Miami court system, I found that Rolle's case had been slowly making its way to trial, with much pre-trial work being done first.  Today is the hearing date.

Brandon Antron Rolle is a guy who received one chance too many.  The sad reality of criminality shown by "48 Hours" is that same people commit crime after crime until they get caught for doing something serious enough to put them away for good.  Perhaps this senselessness of the innocent suffering until the inevitable was the motivation for Philip K. Dick's Minority Report.

"no route found to match "/store" with {:method=>:get}"

attempting to debug:

>> rs = ActionController::Routing::Routes
>> rs.recognize_path "/store"
=> {:controller=>"store", :action=>"index"}

routes.rb seems fine:

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
end

Everything looks good where is the problem? I googled and found a post pointing out spurious routing problems in Rails 1.2.3 and a suggestion to change boot.rb to remedy it:

root_path = Pathname.new(root_path).cleanpath(true).to_s

to

root_path = Pathname.new(root_path).cleanpath(true).realpath().to_s

That suggestion did not work for me. Desperate to get my Rails show back on the road, I did the obvious:

gem uninstall rails
gem install rails

Bingo!

The function that you are currently trying to use is disabled and will be back shortly.We are making some minor changes to this section so please bear with us until we can get it back online.Please do NOT email me about this. Just wait it out. Jul 13, 2007 -Tom

While the typical MySpace user surely hasn't noticed the blip, social networking observers are keen to see whether Facebook has any enduring competitive advantages over MySpace.  The friend status feed has been a unique feature for the upstart network, and according to the FB corporate blog, a technological achievement.  How well MySpace makes the shadowing move will reveal the depth of their technical bench.  Are they a decent media company first but far second as a technologist to the leader as Yahoo is to Google, or is that characterization false?

MySpace has never made any deep innovations.  Their technical competitive strength in the war against Friendster was the ability to engineer scalability.  While Friendster choked on their open source platform, MySpace outran them with ColdFusion on steriods.  Friendster couldn't deliver pageviews or messages and had to cap the friend list at 500, while MySpace's scalability allowed it to foster a laissez fair environment that placed few bounds on the creativity of its users, who under this liberal regime made the system a runaway success.

In this round against Facebook, scaling the mundane -- delivering page views and messages -- is now a problem widely solvable.  The magic is in the innovations that require mathematics and computer science, problems that cannot be solved with simple algorithms and by eliminating bottlenecks or throwing more commodity machines into the webfarm.  Facebook makes much of the social graph, and I suspect the term is more than a mere metaphor.  The innovations on Facebook probably rely much on graph theory and other beyond engineering domains.

Anybody can put computer scientists or mathematicians on staff but is that enough against a technocracy running on all cylinders?  The technology gap between Yahoo and Google is probably two years or so -- and never narrowing -- and worth billions and billions in market cap.  How MySpace recovers from this stumble will indicate the size of their gap.

(Initial coverage of the MySpace stumble)