Someone I know was having trouble getting their PlayStation Portable to connect to the Internet the other day and was desperate enough to ask me for some help (They were desperate. Ed).

When I saw the PSP screen it said that it had not been able to get an IP address. Turns out that when it had asked her for her WEP key she had entered a password. I said that she needed to find the WEP key that she had entered on the two other PC’s in the house and use that on the PSP. Of course she barely understood what I was talking about. She had got the router about 6 months ago and I assume there was some kind of documentation about the WEP key to be used , or maybe it was just written on the box. She obviously entered that key on the two PC’s and that was that. She doesn’t have to enter them each time the PC’s start or when they connect so she put it out of her mind.

She has almost certainly lost any reference to the WEP key and probably chucked the box out. So how’s she going to get the PSP to connect to the Internet? Hopefully she has some software that can update the router with a new WEP key and then apply that to the two PC’s and the PSP. Of course when I mentioned that to her her eyes glazed over. There was no chance of her doing that. She finally muttered about phoning her ISP – AOL. That’s gonna be a rocky conversation, fraught with confusion.

And the moral of this story. Dunno. I did say she should have a notebook where she writes down all of her usernames, passwords, activation codes, serial numbers, registration codes, email addresses, email servers, WEP key etc etc but that idea to many people is very alien. They think, I’ve got a computer to store all of that stuff so why should I write it down in a little book. To them that sounds archaic and it is. But then some people actually believe that the PC is never gonna go wrong (I thought it was the other way around? Ed).

The reality with home unsupported PC’s is that we are only ever one keystroke away from disaster and most software seems to go wrong sooner or later. Sheesh.

They actually keep the complete search text string. The usual answer is so that they can get to know their customers better and therefore make them offers based on their searches. Hmmm…. Has anybody ever been offered anything from AOL or Google for that matter, based on the results of a couple of years worth of search strings. Bet not.

So why are AOL retaining this information and why do they allow searches of dubious material in the first place. Sorta let the customer make all the strange searches they want then when AOL have enough incriminating evidence we’re in gotcha land. Sounds insidious to me. Bet Google and Yahoo do the same. Is something horrible just coming up over the horizon?

Got a gen-u-whine version of XP Pro and installed it ok. I did get one final ‘this windows version is not genuine’ message and then it was gone.

Immediately after installing XP I ran a registry checking program – Registry Mechanic – and it found problems (already?) which it cleared. Then ran another registry checking program – Amust – which found other problems which it cleared. I wonder if there is a single registry checking program which actually finds all problems.

Quote of the day

‘Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right’ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)