Cox Crow

2:46:02 PM #

Registration Required

I've tried to read two stories in the past two days from sites that require registration, one from the Chicago Tribune, the other from the Lost Angeles Times. These are both Tribune Company papers, and share their backend. I can't read the stories because I haven't activated my registration yet. I haven't activated my registration yet because I haven't received the e-mail containing the instructions to activate the registration. I haven't received the e-mail because no e-mail was sent. No e-mail was sent because I was already registered.

The help says

# If that doesn't work, log in with the username and password you chose during the registration process and click the link that says, "Please click here to activate your account."

Except that link doesn't exist. Helpful, no? Could somebody apply for this Quality Assurance position they have open in Chicago?

If they are like other companies, the Lead System Administrator for the Hartford Courant will fix the problem. Oh, wait, that needs to be filled too.

2:13:28 PM # Google It!
categories: Media

X of Y

Need to get the variables for these equations:

• x residential access lines of y housing units
• x DSL lines of y usable access lines

for comparison with CATV penetration. When I was at Fordham, I briefly researched deployment patterns for CATV in The Bronx. Cable television is not well-deployed in the boroughs because the cost of tearing up the streets is higher than the potential return, even though everybody watches TV.

12:01:19 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry

Confused Lawyers

Do these well-intentioned stooges not understand the difference between a copywriteable work and a trade secret?

Wired News: Big Retailers Squeeze FatWallet. Can the unpublished discount price of a DVD player for next week's big sale at Wal-Mart be copyrighted? That's the question at the heart of a legal dispute involving several big retailers and FatWallet, a popular website that caters to bargain shoppers. [Tomalak's Realm]

10:19:04 AM # Google It!
categories: Law

Feeping Creaturism

In the course of writing a warning to others, Mark Pilgrim notes some things I intend to try on my systems. But I wonder, some of the decisions made by the changes in XHTML 1.1 seem just plain stupid.

In any case, I'm still peeved by editors that introduce excessive <p>'s and CMSes that have no excuse for not adequately separating the data from the presentation. I should not have to tweak the defaults to get my page to validate.

10:10:14 AM # Google It!
categories: PWP, Writing Online, System Administration

Yeah, blame the Systems guy

> Lucifer, either make it all work or you will
> be demoted and transferred to a different post.

How is it my fault, if I didn't get a proper spec?

from Project Genesis, via Adam Wendt

8:55:18 AM # Google It!
categories: System Administration