Does anyone happen to know if it’s possible to disable comment display on Digg, or at least load no more than the initial three to five? Digg may now be more popular than Slashdot, but it’s quite obvious where the younger crowd hangs out…

3/2/06 Update
Wow, just a short time after I posted this, Kevin Rose dugg his own video of the upcoming Digg comment system. Comments will be indented in a thread-like view for easy follow-up reading. Useless comments are able to be modded down and tucked away, friends’ comments are highlighted green, and your own comments can be edited within a three minute window. All in all, it looks to be the update we’ve been hoping for. Check out the video.

3/6/06 Update
The new Digg comment system has been implemented, and it appears as though people are using it. I can now happily browse at “+0 diggs” and see useful information. Digg continues to impress me. Nice work, KR!

Of all the laptops I’ve worked on, IBM ThinkPads are by far the easiest to disassemble and fix. They’re also pretty tough machines, as they survive substantially more damage than most of the Dell laptops I’ve seen. If I were a full time Windows user (and I’m not, despite the recent number of PC related posts), I would probably consider purchasing a ThinkPad. If it weren’t for one tiny problem, that is…

Most newer ThinkPad models have a Mini-PCI slot and antennae, ready to be equipped with a standard wireless card. Mini-PCI may be unfamiliar to Mac users reading this blog, just as it was to me several months ago. Think of Mini-PCI as an AirPort Extreme sized connector, but standardized such that any manufacturer can create a compatible communications card. While the slot is standardized, IBM insists on crippling it via software to only accept “IBM brand” wireless cards — which are really just OEM cards made by Philips and others. Upon booting a machine with a non-IBM card installed, the following POST error will be displayed:

1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in
Power off and remove the miniPCI network card.

What a sneaky way to lock people into buying an expensive wireless card, when others can be bought for much much lower prices. (I suppose I can’t complain, though, as AirPort Extreme is even more proprietary. Although, I’ve never had the need to use a different wireless card in my PowerBook — I just bought the “whole widget” from Apple and that was that.) Luckily for ThinkPad owners, there exists a small fix for this “1802″ error: a DOS program which will flip a single bit in the CMOS and allow use of any Mini-PCI wireless card. The program, no-1802.com, can be found here, but I’m unsure of the original author.

To make running this program easier for myself and others, I’ve prepared a floppy disk image as well as a bootable CD.

Download the CD ISO

Download the Floppy Image

Both files will require unzipping before use (use the free 7-Zip instead of WinZip). Once unzipped, the CD version (.iso file) can be burned with Disk Utility or Toast on the Mac, or ImgBurn or Nero on the PC. The floppy disk version can be written with Floppy Image for Windows, or dd if=no1802.img of=/dev/fd0 in a *nix environment. The floppy image is a bit-for-bit copy of what I actually had on disk, and the CD version boots and loads the very same floppy into RAM, using a highly customized Ultimate Boot CD. Hopefully this will allow ThinkPad owners to use any wireless cards, and not just those offered by IBM.

If Asus sold motherboards that were only compatible with Asus graphics cards, people would be less likely to buy Asus hardware. If they placed this information in a small footnote and simultaneously listed an AGP slot in the technical specifications, people who had purchased the hardware with the expectation that they could use their existing graphics card with the same chipset would be justifiably angry. The situation is directly analagous. IBM may feel that US law requires them to implement this restriction in the United States. However, failure to clearly advertise this restriction (especially given that most of the world is not covered by FCC regulations) is unacceptable. — Matthew Garrett

5/17/06 Update
I’m glad to see that people are having success with my pre-made wireless card fix. A list of some of the models affected by IBM’s decision can be found here, thanks to Matthew Garrett. He also has few pages with useful technical details on this topic, as well.

8/30/06 Update
For future reference: IBM “high rate” wireless+56K modem combo cards with FRUs 12P3637, 12P3863, 26P8472 and 91P7661 require separate modem drivers (that aren’t part of the “high rate” package). The cards are made by Actiontec, but the the modem portion is made by Agere/Lucent, and the drivers can be found in IBM’s list of downloads for the R32.

9/10/06 Update
This page was linked to at ThinkWiki, where you’ll find even more information on the 1802 error.

6/7/07 Update
Here’s a list of all the known working an not working Thinkpad models gathered from the comments to date.

NOT Working

• R32, R60
• T60
• Z60t
• X41 2525-6NH

Confirmed Working

• A31, A31 2652-Q3U, A31p, A31p 2653-CU5, A31p 2653-R3U
• R40 2682-HU2, R40 2682-K2G, R40 2681, R40 2896-GZU, R51
• T30, T30 2637, T40, T40 2373, T40 2373-8CU, T40 2373-94G, T40 2374-GG2, T41, T41 2374-7JG, T42, T42 2373-BX9, T42p
• X24, X30, X31, X31 2672-U31

24
by Jem

It’s been a while since I’ve written any music-related posts, so I thought I would get back in the swing of things with the edge-of-your-seat song “24″ by Jem. I first heard the song in the movie trailer for Ultraviolet, but was unsure who performed it. The answer was easily found on one of my favorite resources, the AdTunes fourms, where songs for commercials, trailers, and movies are detailed by anyone who happens to recognize them. After finding out which song it was, I went and sampled it on the iTunes Music Store and bought it shortly thereafter. While “24″ doesn’t specifically describe the TV show with the same title, the lyrics certainly allude to it. Words aside, “24″ really comes to life with the addition of the violins enhancing the soundscape in an almost cinematic fashion. Fans of the show 24 will definitely want to get this track.

Hear it on iTunes

A few days ago, Jon and I found the need to make iTunes to subscribe to a podcast with one click from Safari. After a few guessing attempts and some meager Googling, we were unable to come up with a solution. Today, I ran across a tutorial on how to do just that. The pcast:// prefix, instead of http:// will make the Mac version of iTunes open and subscribe to the podcast URL immediately following the prefix. For the Windows side of things, there are several more steps which involve the creation of an XML file linking to the podcast. With a little server-side user-agent switching or some other per-client trickery, it should be relatively simple to produce a Mac or Windows “one click subscribe” link. Check out the full details at Podcast Shuffle.