My latest article on Secure-eBook's blog has just been posted.

This article gives a few tips on how to make an eBook sample more apt at selling.

The last three in there are also valuable tips when trying to streamline Web pages as well. Especially Web Pages designed to sell a single product:

• Your eBook sample should talk only to your potential clients.
• Keep it short. Organize your content well.
• Always invite your reader towards action. And not only in your closing.

If you're into this kind of material, check out "5 tips to get your sample eBook to sell" for more details.

Heard through the grapevine, multiple times this week already, that the idea of purchasing and downloading legit copies of movies is finally being explored!

This is great!

In my opinion, this is how you fight piracy: you make your product available and easy to buy. And, even more importantly, you price it right.

Why do I think this would work? It works when buying legit copies is easier and more cost-efficient than piracy. Plain and simple.

If its too expensive, people with the skills to hunt for pirated copies will do so. If its too hard to find, more people will get the the illegal stuff first... or just won't bother to end up paying.

I've been meaning to do a series on this subject for such a long time!

At least now I mentionned it...

I'll try to expand more later...

What I've been trying to do lately, is copy backups from one computer in the network to another - in a different building.

I wanted to do this through sftp.

And I wanted it to be automated.

Sftp was nice enough to work with bach files easily. Cron is cool and all of that.

But SFTP did not want to accept passwords through command line.

So I played with Authenticating by Public Key via OpenSSH, as described in the previous link. Which seemed to know about stuff. Stuff that I don't know about.

Stuff that I should've been wary about.

So I ended up destroying my ssh security - everyone from everywhere could log to any account with any password.

Not good.

And I couldn't fix it. Removing what I had done seemed to not be working.

Luckily, the fine folks at the gentoo forums managed to help me get back on my feet. Re-emerging openssh and crushing my old config files seemed to have hellped.

Then I found another fella who seemed to play with these keys (Automated backup through SSH, by Cliff Changchung Zou). Only his tutorial was using words I felt secure about.

Things such as: make a backup on computer A. get computer B to download backup from computer A.

Okay. I can deal with that.

And I did.

And it works.

And my security does not feel more compromized than it was.

(Just in case you're a worried client - That's why I'm having experts set up the security on the servers such as where this blog is being hosted :P )

I made it. I setup KDE, I configured the video and the audio. I ran Hydrogen. All under gentoo, all under VMWare, all under Windows XP.

Thanks to Benoît, Patrice, Vincent and Stefan for their help!!

Okay, so I've been using the NEC LCD1770GX LCD monitor for long enough to have some actual impressions... so here are...

1) The case of the green lit pixel. Its there. Looks like I'm not planning on trying to return the monitor. It's semi-annoying. If I didn't get a refurbished monitor and if I wasn't expecting not to be able to get a replacement, I'd return the monitor for it. The green lit pixel is nearly (when not completely) invisible when working in light environments. I don't notice it when programming. I don't notice it when word processing. However, in dark environments, it shines. Dark movies have a green flashy dot.

I have a dead pixel on a CRT at work and I've learned to forget it. It ain't as annoying as a lit pixel. But its something you can live with.

Sadly, Pixel Phoenix did nothing to revive my lit pixel.

2) Color accuracy. Its okay. Most people will be more than happy with it, right off the box. But, in my opinion, this monitor's color accuracy does not compare to what I would've got from a similarily-priced CRT. I've heard (and I believe) that a higher end LCD monitor would've satisfied me.

Basically, the light colors are too desaturated. For instance, a light yellow that I could clearly see on my CRT is barely different from white. Light colors come out way brighter than on a CRT (nearly giving me a headache on my first session), but I quickly got used to it. Calibration is a mess. No matter what I do, I can't seem to get it calibrated exactly like I want. Good thing it was in a very acceptable state right off the box. I think this is something that'd be true for every LCD screens. Brightness and contrast just doesn't work the same anymore. The very darks are very darker and the brights are very brighter.

In more precise terms, from perfect black to just a touch lighter bears too great a difference for me to calibrate my monitor as I am used too.

I haven't tried printing any art I've made with the monitor, so I don't have any final thoughts on accuracy. I think its still decent. If this was my pro graphics designer monitor, I wouldn't be entirely satisfied. But for home and the occasional graphics work, I say its fine.

3) Refresh at 12ms. Video animators won't like 12ms (or they might get used to it). It just ain't fast enough. There's tearing when playing video (I haven't seen any when playing a DVD, but doing some video mixing or fullscreen playing of other video files shows some). Not enough for me to be angry about it. But definately not what I got from the Viewsonic's 4-8ms. Between the poor quality of the Viewsonics' backlighting and the small shearing and tearing from 12ms playback, I'll take the shearing and tearing anytime.

Conclusion

The NEC LCD1770GX is a decent, very affordable monitor. It looks nice. Doesn't have all the options you could dream of from its menu. It's got a cool USB hub (which I might end up missing when you'll switch monitors five years from now). You won't get the quality output from a CRT of the same size, but the footprint size in itself might make it worth considering.

I'd recommend it to people on a budget.