Archive for June, 2006

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Firefox Conflict Between VLC and Windows Media Player

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

Firefox

A while back, I lost the ability to play Windows Media Player (WMP) videos with my Firefox browser. The WMP controls wouldn’t show up, and there was just a blank space where the media was supposed to be playing. I downloaded and reinstalled the latest WMP version, to no avail. Eventually I just bit the bullet and opened WMP content in Internet Explorer.

Thanks to MozillaZine, however, I have identified and fixed the problem. Turns out there is a conflict between the VLC plugin and the WMP plugin. The solution is to remove the VLC plugin (accomplished by deleting the npvlc.dll file from the Firefox ‘plugins’ directory). I exited Firefox, deleted the file, restarted Firefox, and voila! I could watch Windows Media files.

If you have Firefox and VLC installed, there is a test page where you can check to see if you have this problem.

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A Comprehensive DNA Database

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

Government

Is it just me, or do the anti-DNA-database arguments presented in this article fall flat? I agree it would be necessary to include proper controls, such as re-testing to verify the match, but I just don’t see much difference between taking DNA samples and taking fingerprints. And nobody complains when a suspect is fingerprinted. Leave some comments and let me know your take on the subject.

On a side note, any database would have to include some method of dealing with human chimeras.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
(via slashdot)

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Getting Rid Of Old Hard Drives

Saturday, June 3rd, 2006

Hard Drive

Back when I was in the Air Force, the only approved method of wiping data from a hard drive was to disassemble it and break the platters with a hammer. But if you do as this couple did, and give your computer up to be recycled, I’d suggest at least making a boot disk and reformatting the drive. A better level of security, however, can be found by using Eraser. For certain private information, I go that extra step and use encryption. And for the über-paranoid, there’s whole-disk encryption. (Windows Vista is supposed to have built-in disk encryption, but I wouldn’t trust it to not have a back door.)

http://news.yahoo.com/…
(via The Consumerist and Slashdot)

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Pumpkin Carving

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Pumpkin

Some neat pumpkin-carving creations.

http://www.pumpkinway.com/
(via Neatorama)

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Massively Explosive Aerosol Can

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

Nuclear Explosion

I had no idea aerosol cans were so explosive. I do, however, agree with the Digg commenters and am somewhat leery of his alibi—how does one turn on a stove by accident?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…
(via Digg)

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