~larcher

If you happen to be taking advantage of the -input file=pipe_file feature of @mplayer@, make sure your $HOME variable is defined whenever you launch mplayer. Otherwise, for some reason, mplayer won’t open the pipe for reading, so the commands don’t get through. And any process that tries to write a command to the pipe will hang.

(I’m messing with launching mplayer from a cgi script, and apparently my cgi scripts have no $HOME. )

If anyone’s wondering, the actual price of Vonage’s “$14.99/month” plan is now $18.53/month. This is up from 2.5 years ago when it was $16.94/mo.
We’ve had Vonage since 2003, but weren’t on the cheap plan then .. originally, I believe the only extra charge was the Federal Excise Tax of < = $1.

So what are the extra charges?

January 2004 -- $14.99 + ? = $16.94
* Regulatory Recovery Fee = $1.50
* FET Tax (Federal Excise Tax Tax?) = $0.45

June 2006 -- $14.99 + ? = $18.53
* Regulatory Recovery Fee = $0.99
* Emergency 911 Cost Recovery = $0.99
* Sales Tax = $1.06 (replaced FET, but happens to be >2x as much)
* County 911 Fee = $0.50

It always annoyed me that Ma Bell would quote a certain price for phone service, but then hike the price up with all the fees and taxes and “extras” (like touch-tone dialing). It’s too bad Vonage is starting to tack on more fees now too.

Still, I like their service and the price better than an old-fashioned land-line

From the perspective of a piece of software, a computer program, a chunk of running code, it is difficult (if not impossible) to tell the difference between a) a real computer and b) a complete simulation of a computer running on another, larger computer.

…

The same goes for your mind examining the universe around you.

My head hurts … stupid mondays.