I seem to go through periods when attempts to access a computer on my home network gives this error msg from XP:

“… is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found.”

Google tells me I am not alone. After trying many many different fixes, this time changing node types worked. No, I don’t know what a node type is, but neither do I much care. The solution may work for you if you meet the following condition:

Go to one of the computers that’s not accessible. In a command box type “ipconfig /all”. (If the results scroll off the screen, instead type “ipconfig /all | more” and use the space bar to scroll.) Look for “NodeType.” If it’s not “Hybrid,” you may have found your trouble. (I’m not spelling this out step by step because if you don’t know to do this stuff, you shouldn’t attempt the fix.)

Here’s a discussion thread that explains how you can change the node type by editing the registry. Note that editing the registry is a scary, scary thing that can kill your PC dead, so don’t do it unless you know what you’re doing.

Also please note that there are lots of reasons that you may be getting that message. Google it and you’ll find many other less drastic solutions, including remembering to share some folders, turning on the file and print sharing client, and making sure the squirrel has left your computer for the summer (it’s a long story). Only edit your registry if all else fails. (Final disclaimer: This seems to have worked for me, but in an hour I may find out that I’ve hosed my entire system.)

Or – allow me – Get a Mac. [Technorati tags: xp networking nodetype]

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In a conversation with Erica George at the Berkman she pointed out that the demographics of Live Journal don’t always represent one’s experience of Live Journal — the demographics say that teenage girls are the largest users, but if you’re a 25 year old, your social group there may not look that way at all.

Which raises an issue about the way the “long tail” is pictured. Clay’s charts are accurate depictions of his data, but they have a mythic power that’s misleading: The long tail looks like, well, a long tail when in fact it’s a fractal curlicue of relationships. It’s more like a squirrel’s tail than a monkey’s. When marketing folks don’t understand that, they confuse the long tail with an opportunity to do one-to-one marketing, treating each person as a “market of one,” instead of seeing that the ones are in conversation with other ones. [Technorati tags: LongTail shirky blogs EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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The power of tags shows that the way to manage information overload is more information. That’s what the doomsayers of the 90’s — Information Anxiety! Information Tidal Wave! — didn’t foresee. [Technorati tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous tags]

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Alex Beam, a Boston Globe columnist who frequently makes me uncomfortable because of the personal nature of his attacks, today holds his fellow journalists’ feet to the fire for not making a bigger deal about Apple’s suit against Nicholas Ciarelli, a blogger who published “trade secrets.”

Ciarelli is accused of doing exactly what reporters all over America are supposed to be doing: finding and publishing information that institutions don’t want to reveal. Do you think the Pentagon would have released additional details about football hero Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan unless pressed by Washington Post reporters? No, I don’t think so either. To think that a 19-year-old man should face trial for engaging in behavior that is the cornerstone of our democracy is sickening.

He then uses this failure to attack one of his consistent targets, Harvard, this time because the Nieman Foundation hasn’t taken a stand on the issue.

Of course, Beam tilts the playing field by introducing Ciarelli as a “19-year-old journalist,” not as a blogger. The last thing I want to do is open up that fruitless debate — remind me to blog about Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory some more — and I don’t know if bloggers should have precisely the same protections as journalists. So I ask the question differently: What’s better for our democracy? And in this case, having a Big Company sue a Little Guy for publishing stuff that they wouldn’t have sued a Big Company like The Globe for strikes me as bad for democracy. [Technorati tags: apple media ciarelli blogs]

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Q: Why don’t peanuts fly coach?

A: Not enough legume.

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David Miller, my literary agent, passes along the first Nigerian-style “419“ spam scam I’ve seen that uses a dead American as the source of the supposed millions:

It is obvious that this proposal will come to you as a suprise. This is because we have not met before but I am inspired to send you this email by the huge fund transfer opportunity that will be of mutual benefit to the two of us.

However, I am Barrister Phillip Andrews,the personal attorney to the late Senator Paul lane Wellstone, a Citizen of the United states and he was into politics.

On the 25th of October 2002, my client,his wife and their three children were involved in a fatal Plane Crash near Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport.

Unfortunately they all lost their lives including other people in the Plane.Since then I have made several enquiries to several Embassies to locate any of my clients extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to trace and locate any member of his family but of no avail, hence I contacted you.

I contacted you to assist in repartrating the money and property left behind by my client since I have no place to locate any of his relatives. I can easily convince his bank in the Europe with my legal practice that you are the only surviving relation of my client.Otherwise the Estate he left behind will be confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this huge deposits were lodged.

Particularly, My late client had an account with one of the banks in Europe valued at about US$9.3Million…[etc.]

Paul Wellstone??? Well, we already knew these people have no shame.

By the way, the return address is to the .az (Ajerbijan) country code. [Technorati tag: spam]

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Marilyn “World’s Smartest Person” vos Savant today in Parade agrees with a letter writer that it’s reasonable to drop friends who curse. Writes vos Savant:

I notice that none of my friends use bad language! I guess I’ve never found an interesting person with a foul mouth.

Wow. Some of my best friends curse like sailors in a croc pond. And some of the best writers do also. Heck, I even know a chief blogging officer who’s been known to have a mouth on him, and no one has ever ever called him not interesting. [Technorati tag: misc]

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I enjoyed Kottke’s riff… [Technorati tag: humor]

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Here’s a puzzle I read in A Beautiful Mind — wow, is the movie a lie! — as expressed at The Ultimate Puzzle Site:

Consider a road with two cars, at a distance of 100 kilometers, driving towards each other. The left car drives at a speed of forty kilometers per hour and the right car at a speed of sixty kilometers per hour. A bird starts at the same location as the right car and flies at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour. When it reaches the left car it turns its direction, and when it reaches the right car it turns its direction again to the opposite, etcetera.

The question is: How far does the bird fly?

I’m going to give you two hints:

FIRST HINT: If you’re filling up a page with complex formulae, you’re going wrong.

Scroll down for the next spoiler. (This is for those of you readi1ng this as an RSS feed.)     

SECOND HINT: Select between the X’s to see the hint:
X     The two cars are an hour apart     X

Scroll down for solution.    

SOLUTION: Select between the X’s to see the answer:
X The cars take an hour to reach each other. That’s supposed to be the easy part. That means the bird is flying for an hour at 80km/hour. Hence, the bird flies 80km. X

No, I didn’t get the answer. [Technorati tag: puzzle]

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Steam, the obnoxious wave of the future when it comes to delivering games, has been asking players to participate in a hardware survey. You can see the 1,000,000+ results tabulated here. You’ll see a profile of what the power-hungry side of the market looks like: Lots of RAM, lots of disk, lots of cycles.

Marketers take note: The amount of installed HD space is far higher than the amount of unused HD space. It’d be a good time to launch those teradrives you’re stockpiling… [Technorati tag: games]

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