This is another for the “technology WAS broken by idiots” pile. It seems high-minded journalists are just now discovering that the promised full access to the Internet for those covering the Olympics will not be delivered. They’re whining and crying and saying Chinese officials promised them full access without censorship, and now it seems various “problems” are blocking that access. Oh, grow up.

Of course the Olympics are censored – China remains one of the single most paranoid governments in power today. The Chinese government has bullied every single world-level auction and search site to blocking sites pertaining to anything anti-Chinese government, like stories on human rights and worker dignity, among others.

Of course the Chinese government promised everything would be wonderfully free and open, because they wanted the Olympics to show the world they are the fastest-rising financial power. Of course they lied to get the Olympics, because that’s what governments do all too often (have we found any Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq yet?). Of course the big companies and TV networks played along, because they want access to 1.3 billion potential customers and a world-wide viewing audience.

The only fools are the people who thought the Chinese leaders were telling the truth or that multi-national companies would demand fairness and openness. Huge companies only want more customers, and will say or do just about anything to increase their market share, including snuggle up to as many corrupt Chinese government officials as necessary.

Some news will get out, because it always does. Anyone smart enough to set up a satellite Internet connection, or modem through their satellite phone, will bypass the Internet blocks.

Sorry, but technology can’t fix broken governments or companies bending over to those broken governments.

** Update 8/1/08, 3:15pm: my in-laws finally have phone service. It only took four hours on hold and two visits from a Verizon tech, but they do have phones once again. **

Verizon renamed themselves away from GTE (at least in the Texas area) to get away from their decades-old stigma of lousy phone service multiplied by lousier customer service. New names don’t help any more than painting your 1972 Pinto a new color will turn it into a 2008 Mustang. Terrible service and worthless management can’t be painted over.

My in-laws lost their house to a fire in January. Rebuilding went down to the bricks in some places, and wall studs in others. Complete loss, complete rebuild.

When they tried to move their phone number to their temporary apartment abode during home reconstruction, Verizon wouldn’t do it. This was a Verizon land line they’d had for maybe 25 years or so int two different homes. The Verizon rep told them they only thing they could do was forward the old number to the new number.

OK, said my father-in-law, accepting that he’d have to pay for two phone lines for the duration. Forward that number.

We can’t do it, said the Verizon reps, only you can do it. Get this: they were told to call from their old phone to request the forwarding service. Yes, the phone in a house that burned down. Yes, calling on phones that had turned into lumps of melted plastic with metal bits sticking out.

My in-laws were so shell shocked with their loss they didn’t fight, and wouldn’t let me do it for them. They expected to live with the problem until moving back to their rebuilt house.

Now Verizon can’t be bothered to come hook up the telephone cable from the pole to their house. The electricians have the phone wiring ready, but Verizon won’t come and hook the cable to the phone panel on the house.

Anyone working for Verizon want to offer a reason for this insanity? Anyone ever received good service from Verizon the last few years?

My in-laws are actively looking to get broadband phone service using the cable company, bundling with TV and Internet access. I encourage that.

Anyone wonder why Verizon’s land line customer base drops by about 7-8 percent per year? Anyone with half a brain left in Verizon executive positions? Evidently not.

Brick? Aggressive iPhone users eager to escape the clutches of ATT’s wireless stranglehold on iPhone service in the US download some tricky bits to modify their phones. Apple responds by turning those phones into bricks whenever they update the iPhone software. Imagine how much fun you could have with your laptop if it decided to assign itself a password one night, giving you a “Password=” prompt the next time you booted it. Even more fun, there is no correct password you can guess to access your laptop, excuse me, brick, no matter how hard you try.

If you own a Toshiba Satellite or Tecra laptop, get ready to play the “My laptop is now a brick” game. You can read the entire list of Toshiba models here at their official support page for this horrible problem. No apologies on this page, but plenty of models to check out and upgrade the BIOS.

Do it yourself fans can follow these directions from TechSpot. It requires you to take out your laptop’s keyboard and wireless model, then jumper two soldered leads labeled C88 with a paper clip while powering up your laptop. This will reset your password, including the bizarre random password created by the system.

My friend Kim Brand at FileEngine had this problem with his daughter’s laptop. Such fun for a college student to try to access her schoolwork on her laptop, and be denied access. Wouldn’t you love to have that problem at work, maybe during a big presentation?

Toshiba’s option for returning your laptop to the land of the living is to send it to the factory where they will reset your password, or rather the random system password, for you. They will also upgrade the BIOS which you should do immediately if you have a Toshiba laptop of any kind. Let’s hope they fixed the horrible problem they’ve created.

As I understand it, the Toshiba repair is free. But they don’t compensate you for your time and trouble and the lack of your laptop for the two weeks it will likely take them to receive, fix, and return your laptop.

Shame on you, Toshiba. Maybe I should change the blog logo for a day to “Toshiba Is Broken.”

“The time of worry is over” says Microsoft, according to MS expert Mary-Jo Foley on ZDNet. No, “the pain spreads to all” starts now says me, based on all my previous experience watching Microsoft move to control a new area. Microsoft tried to be polite about their new under-performing Vista operating system, but now the gloves are off and they’re cramming it down our throats, no matter what.

XP support, while officially continuing, has been getting blasted in various places because the commitment to support XP customers seems to be completely gone. The latest, and most detailed account I’ve read lately came from InfoWorld’s Ed Foster and his report on “The Suspicious Death of XP.”

Of course, there’s nothing suspicious about it at all. Microsoft holds all the cards and now they’re taking the huge stack of chips sitting on the operating system table. They will force us to Vista every way possible. First they stopped allowing hardware manufacturers to sell XP on new systems, forcing Vista on customers buying new PCs. Now they’re making support so painful many XP holdouts will give up and switch, or buy a new PC with Vista.

I’m afraid Microsoft under Steve Ballmer may be more aggressive and hurl more of its weight around than ever before. The way they’ve handled the Vista rollout shows nothing but arrogance about what customers want and when they want to buy it. Of course, all customers want is a good operating system that’s a real upgrade from XP. Too bad Vista fails in that regard.

We may have to switch from XP to Vista, but we don’t have to like it. And we don’t have to do it quietly.

File this under “Technology WAS Broken” because this is another example of idiots breaking technology. Why do we let politicians loose on the street without supervision?

You know how Texas loves guns? Better not piss of your computer tech if this law stays on the books. In Texas, thanks to Rep. Joe Driver in the Texas Legislature, who hid a law evidently written entirely by lobbyists into the end of the year rush. See if we should nominate Driver for the Idiot of the Year award after you read this editorial.

If you believe the movies and hard-boiled noir books, every PI packs heat. Next time you call the Geek Squad, they may come armed with more than screwdrivers and troubleshooting CDs. Hands up and step away from the computer!

This argument surfaces now and then, because people searching through sensitive should have some liability in some cases. Maybe it’s the PI lobby that convinced the weak-minded Driver to do their bidding. Maybe it’s the group opposing this law that fooled him into plopping such an awful pile of legislation on the floor of the state capitol, so the uproar would bring spotlights on the stupidity of the law and get it changed.

Stay tuned for Jay Leno and David Letterman to weigh in. Can a “Top 10 Mistakes By Gun-Toting Geeks” be in our future?

Is anyone else already sick of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt Microsoft is already sowing about Windows 7 or whatever will follow Vista? I’m not sure if I’m more disgusted with Microsoft for not having the courage to support Vista (or the brains to do it right during development) or the trade press falling all over themselves swallowing the garbage Microsoft hands out. Maybe I’m more disgusted with the press. Yes, definitely. Microsoft’s job is to sell products, and the press’ is to report objectively on the market. They’re not doing so when they fill the air with rehashed Microsoft “next Windows” propaganda.

Vista has been out about 18 months, if you count the few packages shipped in December 2006 as really shipping. Volume shipments started just over a year ago and there’s a Service Pack out, so we have to say Vista is in full swing. It has at least three more years to be the only desktop operating system from Microsoft, based on the last several actual ship dates for new versions of Windows.

Microsoft knows well how to seed the market with promises that “the next Windows is great, just hold on a couple more months.” They’ve started that earlier with Vista than normal, probably because Vista delivers so little value over XP (or even Windows 2000 with some third party utilities).

As Aesop said about 4,000 years ago, the bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The bird we have, Vista, isn’t worth much. I guarantee the bird in the bush, Windows 7 or whatever they call it, won’t be much better. And it certainly won’t be here until 2010. if you believe otherwise, you deserve what you get.

My most recent feature story, Whatever Happened to Artificial Intelligence? is now up on Network World’s front page. You can also see the discussion on SlashDot here.Always great to write a feature story, and even better when people like it. Hop onto either site and say your bit.

Let me be fair – when a Windows XP update blew away my video driver a few years ago, causing me to struggle for a couple of days then reformat and reload, I complained. Now that Ubuntu, the leading Linux operating system according to many observers more knowledgeable about the inner workings of that market than I, blew away my video driver and caused me to struggle then reformat and reload, I proclaim loudly that Linux video support sucks.

My Linux complaints go beyond Ubuntu, and beyond just driver issues. Multiple different Linux distributions have a terrible time handling my wide screen LCD monitor in 1920 x 1200 mode. Ubuntu worked great during installation and early use, then looked so solid I was about to make version 8.10 my primary machine, then the updates sank that boat. But Mandriva Spring 08. DreamLinux 2.2, and ForeSight all refused to play properly with my 1920 x 1200 monitor.

Each one required me to try and trick the system to accept the resolution shown in the configuration screens. Hey, Linux developers, when your Screen Resolution Preference dialog says “1920 x 1200” then your monitor driver should set the screen to that resolution. Far too often, it didn’t. Sometimes I could trick it into working, but that just makes me nervous about the next reboot and certainly next update cycle. Sometimes I could never make it work.

Novell’s SuSE Linux and Fedora 7 worked reliably (as has Ubuntu 7.10 for months, which is why I looked forward to Ubuntu 8). DreamLinux, an interesting distribution that acts like a Macintosh in many ways, has an update I need to try for more than just video support reasons.

I’m putting Ubuntu 8 on again right now and will see if I can keep that stable. But if any Linux video driver developers want to tell me why Linux video support is so random and aggravating, I’d love to hear about it.

Yeah, I can go into terminal mode and play with the xorg.conf file, but guess what: that doesn’t always work either. And you’ll never gain market share if your configuration files don’t work without playing in the text editor. You’ll lose ground if the text editor sessions don’t work either.

Never make the mistake of thinking you have “solved” your security problem. Security is not a problem to solve, it’s a battle to fight each and every day. Hackers don’t take days off, and your security can’t either.

Thanks to ComputerWorld for 10 Essential (and Free!) Security Downloads for Windows that appeared in late May. I have tested several of these over the years and found them all helpful and certainly a great value (free is a great price). You may get a few ads or not be able to schedule operations or some other limitation, but you do get help in a critical area.

When you do find a free tool that works great for you, security or otherwise, remember to either donate or upgrade to the commercial version so the programmers can continue to improve their product. You almost never see an Open Source or freeware program that prices their paid product higher than the commercial equivalent. You save trying the free software, and you continue to save when you buy the upgrade. That’s a good deal on both hands.

One of my favorite “Grandma” sayings that apply to technology, and there are many, is that “it isn’t what you don’t know that will hurt you, but what you know that’s wrong.” While technology is new, people aren’t, and human nature traits Grandma learned still apply today.

Hence a nice article of “30 Tech Myths Debunked” from Network World via PC World India. Many of these myths are just common sense, and you realize they are wrong if you think just a little bit. Many others used to be true or at least partially true, but the march of time and technology changed the rules.

Some of the rules apply to individual PC users rather than businesses, such as the myth that “gaming is addictive, distractive, and kills productivity” and the like. Hey, people have wasted time at work for years going back through Solitaire to crosswords puzzles to gossip. People are people, no matter what type of computer they sit behind.

Go through the list and see how many times you’re surprised by the answer. Mark how many times you’re right or wrong on the answers, even if you just track the answers that apply to business us. If you tend to be right most of the time, great. If you’re wrong most of the time, fix that. Read some technical Web sites, go to a technology conference and talk to vendors (you can almost always get a free ticket to the exhibits area) and maybe trust your technical advisor a bit more.