I do applaud their blackout on January 18, 2012.

Every Category in this blog system is applied to this post, therefore, and every TAG … it’s just not reasonable to list every tag, so I’ve used ‘Everything’ and ‘Nothing’ as my TAGS.

A new year dawned 6 days ago. Christmas even longer ago. Getting to each event was fast. Now with this one new week, they seem so distant, removed and far away. At some point in the last two weeks in our house we were talking about the PS Vita “that it’s only … away!” when we’d get ours. Now it feels stretched out of reach, just over the horizon, something that was right in view all the time, anxious for the day to arrive, now it seems further away than ever.

It’s only perspective. It’s been one of those weeks, this and that, news of internet stuff, be it threats of one group or another, to make things unpleasant for many, many folks. These times are insane, it doth seem.

I am testing WLW to show myself and my children why this is or isn’t good to use.

I have used it before. It’s OK. It’s different, and I hope they will see it’s beneficial-ness … not be such a “blank slate” like the browser web blogging interface is.

I’ve used this and other blog clients, but usually just use the WP interface connected to each blog I have. Anyhow, this is not my main computer. I only have a laptop, have for a long time, my desktop being relegated to being the old old old machine that HAS to be the family machine and as the children get older it’s getting older faster than them. Other old laptops we have had are dying off as well, and that makes this old desktop even more precious and delicate.

It doesn’t have it’s own monitor anymore either. It’s either connected to the big flat screen tv in the living room, or the small one in my bedroom. Neither place is really good for it. FWIW it’s just so important to keep it working, it has all my stuff archived on it and I’m down to one working disc again, and so this windows install is on the same disc, different partitions, but it’s still trouble. I’ve had trouble with every hard drive in this machine the past couple of years, no matter how old the drive is it just …. augh! Not again! My stuff … my hubby promised through Christmas present 2010 to let me build my dream desktop. Oh well, it’s not to be. I have the shell (case) and data that is in jeopardy.

I like how Pale Moon x64 works, it really seems faster, and the thing I love, it downloads faster, absolutely. I tested a file from the Playstation blog. It was a worthy test, 63mb mp3 file. So, I’m mostly using Pale Moon today, and for the foreseeable future, as long as it continues to perform.

I tried a x64 version of Firefox before, and it’s just plain no good to me. Everything I’ve wanted has worked phenomenally in it today, You Tube, Accuweather, Flickr, Word Press sites, Google things … I’m using it right now. I love how quick my own blog sites, like this one here, load up so much easier, more fluidly, pleasant.

Firefox isn’t for “Modern OS’s and Processors” really. I knew that, only stuck with it out of comfort now knowing what else there was, until I felt compelled to find something else for another reason. I was actually researching trying to find another email client, Thunderbird has been making me upset here and there (so many lags right when I want to write something) and compacting isn’t impacting this, I do that daily or more often, sometime missing a day, but if I don’t open my mail for a day it’s totally unuseable to read or write anything for a few to several minutes. Granted I have many accounts in it, but I don’t get THAT much email. Au contraire, I just don’t.

Anyhow, I found a reference for Pale Moon, looked it up and downloaded and installed it immediately. Lovely, fast install, and even faster usability on every front from opening it, to browsing, to downloading files. I haven’t uploaded anything with it yet. We shall see when I have opportunity for that.

As for email, I didn’t pursue it once I found something that made me happy on another front. Email client search will continue some other time. (my feeling may change tomorrow when Thunderbird locks up with downloading and moving stuff…(all imap with old-messages) and I need to clean up something or just do something, I don’t know. I’m lazy with my email, if you can call compacting and deleting, emptying trash, and compacting stuff again lazy.

I do let my server move stuff from inbox to old-messages … but that’s ridiculous if it’s causing my annoyance since like I said, I don’t get that much email, and I do delete email, move email to other folders, compact, empty trash, compact, compact, compact.

It’s not THAT bad, just my “it should work easier than this by now in time, it’s 2011 for goodness sake!”  attitude.

This is silly as the only reason I HAD to have them do it is that THEIR system messed up giving me devices I had labeled that were real PSP’s to be only virtual PSP’s activated with Video/Comics & Music and the real world PSP’s when I activated each one, my personal one connected to my virtual one as it should, but the other two showed up as NEW PSP’s and that’s purely nothing that I did. I couldn’t deactivate the PSP Video/Comic activations because I had no deviced tied to those virtual activations, they went into limbo even though the ones were no different from before in my house, with mine acting right, and the other two totally not connecting to those profiles online in Sony’s database, FOR WHATEVER REASON! But all I wanted was for them to fix it.

The biggest thing about it is, if they stick to their guns and say later, “We can’t do that because on November 26, 2011 we did that for you and it’s a once in a lifetime thing for any one PSN ID.”  … this post is about it, and I will demand justification for it again, since they messed up my systems with their deactivation scheme in the first place.

So anyhow, I got the account wiped. Within a couple ours everything was off my account and I started from scratch and added each device in and labeled it appropriately. I only activated GAMES on everything. Nothing else. Sony automatically puts MUSIC on each device (I don’t use it though, signed into it once this year just to see what it was, but didn’t do anything with it and that’s that.)

I’m not putting VIDEO on any machine/device unless I need it in the future. On each PS3 we can’t do it (only 1 is allowed per account.) I don’t know if that is ONLY the PSN Store Video (I guess it is) and that the other kinds of video I can do on either/or whenever without “VIDEO” activation. (Netflix, Cinema Now,  Hulu, Vudu, but Video Unlimited I don’t know.)

In the past I’ve gotten video on my computer from Amazon Unboxed. I’m not a big fan of digital renting of movie or shows as you don’t have much time with them if something keeps you from it, I prefer discs to that, plus a disc can be watched anywhere, anytime as many times as desired and sold or given away later if desired. Digital content, if you buy it, it is yours forever and limited to the program it is part of, either in their cloud service or on your harddrive. No thank you except for Digital Copy from some movie discs, that’s a back up version to watch without the disc at times, nice sometime, hardly used but a nice feature, and it’s not my only option. I like options.

That’s why Sony has me not so happy with this license change. It’s less options.

Now then, on the phone the person my hubby talked to told him about how Me as Master account with Sub Accounts works. I know how it works and how I WANT it to work, but she/he was supposedly telling him that on the PSP it DOES work the way I want, but she’s not right. I know, nothing has changed, their are no controls in Master Accounts to let them use my content. They have to be logged on as me on the portable devices. Why they don’t change that, I don’t know.

For some games they can put their sign-in PSN ID in, but for some games they HAVE to have MY PSN ID input. It’s not an easy thing, it’s a jump through hoops to do it kind of thing. I wrote about it early this year (in August) when we bought Syphon Filter Combat Ops on PSN… and then referred to it again when we got the UMD of Syphon Filter Logan’s Shadow
.

I can’t believe it from this perspective, that their stuff is so messed up as to not recognize that those two PSP’s are the same ones as before hitting the Deactivate button. The Music/Video/Comics activation is totally annoying, as you can’t get rid of old ones that are activated with that stuff since that stuff isn’t EDITABLE ONLINE ANYMORE as it once was (I know, I took that stuff off of one of the old ones we don’t have anymore but was still connected to the account, then the DEACTIVATE from post 11-18 did take that one away totally. There is no way to take such an approach now though, cause the DEVICE section was changed, and there is no way to change the PSP Music/Video/Comics thing anymore. I’m glad I did it when I could, before, but now I’m locked with two PSP’s listed with that stuff, and when trying to activate the ACTUAL PSP’s in question, they can’t be activated for that stuff, and if I activate for GAMES they show up as NEW PSP’s, don’t connect to the ones there already, thus I refer to those on my account as Virtual PSP’s, they used to be representative of IRL PSP’s but no longer are connected. Urgh!!!!!

Sub Accounts are given to minors. Parents are who are the Master Account holders that a Sub Account will be under. Seems straightforward. It’s not.

You can start a new id sign up on the PS3, you will not be able to complete the subaccount on the PS3 though. You have to get an email with a link to continue on a PC.

When you, the Master Account, gets the email you will click the link provided and the place online it takes you will just show you the Server Maintenance page … since the attack earlier in 2011 that’s that. It’s a dead end.

You can try to access your account on PSN on your PC … same result.

So what do you need to do to get a subaccount created and WORKING as well?

http://account.qriocity.com

Go there. Sign in as the Master Account with your PSN credentials (It’s a Sony site) You will then be able to see lots of info you never saw before. Your devices which have been activated with a PSN ID will show up there. My account shows 2 PS3′s and 4 PSP’s. It’s right, plus wrong. Unfortunately there was a problem with my sons PSP 3000 and we exchanged it at Best Buy for a new one. Wiped it of account and games. Whoops! Forgot to “deactivate” it. So someday that will bite us in the butt. Right now it’s not, but depending on how it works about PS VITAS later, it may.

Under the ACCOUNT area you can view and edit many details of your Master Account, including Sub Accounts. The disconnect I have with Sony is the management of these Sub Accounts.

You can’t add an account fully this way. You can add them to your account. You can then try to login to PSN on either the PSP, the PS3 or the PC on their site. All three will tell you that the account is not usable on PSN. and then “Go to: http://register.qriocity.com.” Thus, you are starting a PSN ID sign in for the Sub Account, looks the same to you there as any others you have active, but it’s still not ready. Nothing there will link you to “what you should do next if you want to use this Sub Account with PSN, i.e. PS3 or PSP.”

What do you REALLY need to do before attempting to logon to PSN?

Logout of qriocity after you created the Sub Account. Sign in again, but this time as the Sub Account. Click on each of the tabs in the account area and do what you need to. You need to get a PSN ID, that’s where you do it. Also, you have to defitely, after the PSN ID is obtained, click on DEVICES and PS3 (or whatever is applicable to you) and finally, that is where you will be presented with something you may have encounter online looking for help. THAT is the place where the “update account for PSN” is located. ONLY on the NEW Sub Accounts PS3 area. NOT your Master Account. You have nothing to do with it. Ridiculous, but true, except for the fact of this: you have to provide MASTER CREDENTIALS to get the PSN ID and to “activate it with PSN” as well. But you can’t do it from your Master Account. It’s stupid.

There is also no way to move a Sub Account to a Master Account, and I am hoping they will figure that out and fix it before too long, so that my children, as they grow up, can keep their darn’ed PSN ID’s if they want to. Without being under my PSN ID’s albotros forever circling above them the rest of their lives.

What’s the point of an ID if you can’t use it like a human: protected as a child, emmancipated from that protection once 18 or 21 or 25, or SOMETIME at the least, by choice or by force.

A billion hoops to jump through getting my new 11 year old a PSN ID. It’s the age restriction I have placed on my children for getting one. I gave my older two ones in the past, before the hacked PSN thing, and it wasn’t this hard to get it going. I banged my head over this and never found ALL the information in ONE spot. Maybe everyone knows that you have to do stuff like this, except for now the only route is through qriocity and many people don’t know that, but once there, adding an account, they KNOW enough to look deep into the Sub Account instead of their Master Account … anyhow, that’s the case, and it’s not that I didn’t do it on both sides of the issue, I did, just never clicked the PS3 under DEVICES on my Sub Account login for my son. I mean, the disconnect was there since I never had to do that with anyone else, as that sort of info wasn’t on PSN when I signed them up long ago.

Long and short of it is, my 11 year old now has a PSN ID and it’s working. Great. He’s happy, but only after I nearly tore my hair out, and he was agitated ’cause he was waiting for it all morning after finding out about it, and it didn’t work and I was frustrated and he got that way and it just wasn’t fun.

Now it is. Hope this helps someone else.

I’ll try to change this post later by adding numbered easy to follow directions, instead of just having the rhetoric version.

My 15 year old and I have been looking for a PSN game we’d like to get for our PSP’s and decided on Syphon Filter Combat Ops yesterday. We did an Ad Hoc match last night, then this morning tried Infrastructure … and we both couldn’t play at the same time with My Master ACCOUNT being the one that buys the game … so frustrating –the PSN crap about Accounts. When I first started with PSN I had a Master Account, I would be the one buying everything on PS3 plus I was the only one with a PSP. Then later I got a new PSP and my son got a PSP too. Things got dicey. He couldn’t use his PSN ID on his PSP … well, in the end it only mattered … not really.

This new (for us) game is the first thing that REALLY got us though. Other games it didn’t matter for (online play) to have separate PSN Activatation/ID sign in. It was managed somehow else, I guess, or else we didn’t do anything with it, or it’s not really connected to the PSN ID for scores and such. I don’t know, it’s confusing, but the point is, it became an issue absolutely today with Syphon Filter Combat Ops. So, I started looking and found that if you:

Have games on a PSP that is Activated by the Buying Account of those games and you want to use another PSN ID to play a certain one of those games …

On the PSP XMB go to Account Management, press the triangle button and choose “DELETE” on the menu that pops up to the right.

Then click the new “Sign Up for a PSN Account” icon that replaces the Account Management in the XMB.

Assuming you have another PSN ID already, sign in as an existing user …. and that is that.

The PSP stays ACTIVATED via the previous PSN Account that was the buying account for all the games.

Now, you cannot go to the store and BUY OR DOWNLOAD ANYTHING from that point, or else the PSP will be un-activated and re-activated with the NEW PSN ID.

To buy games or even free stuff … demos and such, you will have to download via your PC and Media Go or use the PS3 PSN store to buy and download to the PS3 then connect your PSP to either the PC or the PS3 with a USB cord and tranfer the content over. Buying or Downloading as the Buying Account that is associated with the PSP activated content is the important fact to remember … it must be downloaded via that person’s PSN ID. It will work on the PSP that has the OTHER PSN ID signed in, keep it working with the PSN games that need that login ID to work the way one wishes, plus keep ability to play all the PSN content that was downloaded before, plus after with the “sideload” way of getting content on the PSP with the Buying Account Associated with the ACTIVATED PSN ID. So games ACTIVATED as PSN ID #1 will work on PSN ID#2′s PSP because only the Sign-In information was changed, NOT the Activation.

We have been concerned with this stuff for a long time because of issues of leaderboards, and medals, rewards, trophies, etc. being connected to the player and the associated PSN ID … and the “buying account” having the ability to put games on more than one device is a family friendly thing, but the PSN ID part of it convolutes it totally.

The upcoming PS Vita is a murky idea … all because of this PSN ID stuff. At least I know how to make it work for the now, on the PSP, with it’s current ACTIVATION methodology and PSN Sign-In separately.

One hitch though is some other “online entitlement” sort of games that had a certificate with a UMD purchase. If you have that associated with a buying account it has to be played with that as the sign-in account. So … you then have to jump through more hoops to sign-in as the Buying Account  … or just give more $ to PSN with the person’s “OTHER” PSN Account and buy separate Online Entitlement. (worth … something, if it makes it easier to deal with plus makes the online play a better experience on that end [somehow, someway as they say the $$$ makes the piracy go away, which makes the experience online cleaner, better, tighter, whatever-er. FWIW, a small charge is worth the ease, but that's pretty much the thing, you buy a disc for a reason then can only use it certain ways in a certain machine (signed-in a certain way) ... uh, that's not so great. But whatever, this is how they are doing it more and more ... online entitlement purchase. Each user of the game must have a different sign-in PSN ID, and it has to be tied to the actual online entitlement.

I can rip UMD games so they can be played on any of our PSP's, I have Pro Hen installed. [no, don't ask for me .iso's and such, I don't share except for with my husband and children who live with me.] It’s very nice. But for my children it’s not fully, for Patapon 3 came with a certificate to redeem for online entitlement. It was done with my Master Account, of course. Well now that ugly thing has reared it’s head. Son #2 wants to play ONLINE with Son #1, both using a ripped copy of the UMD, both can’t do it with my Master account being the account on their machines, and now today Son #2 thinks it’s possible and Son #1 thought so for awhile. Patapon 3 won’t go online with my Son #1′s PSN ID, it’s not the one tied to the entitlement. He can’t just “sign-in” so easily either.

Pooh, pooh, pooh, it’s a mess. Anyhow, everything else works to have the games activated to my account, and have a sign-in for their accounts, and side-loading new content is possible. Not bad, we do have to plugin a PSP to charge it, so just having it charging while side-loading occassionally, why not. It’s just that older online games will work with this, but some newer ones won’t, so if you really want it, then you have jump through hoops. I think ultimately Patapon 3 Online isn’t really something Son #1 is desirous of that much, so he’ll live without it for multi-person play with Son #3 and others, for now. I’ll have to fund him to get online entitlement in any case, it’s my deal to give him the money for the sub-account, plus if we gave him Patapon 3 and he put it on my account, then I owe him the online entitlement for his own account.

Now that brings up something else, if anyone plays anything online with a PSP, I don’t WANT them using my PSN ID … that’s full circle to in the beginning when I first started all this PSN stuff, if I have a Master Account, then any sub-accounts will have top down flow … my money flows, and if I buy it they can play it on their own ID’s on PSP’s right? Nope, wrong.

It’s half-assed. Just fix it Sony/PSN … buying can be activation tied another way, it can be. Signing-in to play on a device should be personal, and ALLOWED activation can be in the system some way that is easy, foolproof, not hoops to jump through, or anything to hack…something totally within the legal requirements of licensing as it goes with an immediate family of Sony Playstation device users. And games should cost less if we each have to buy separate copies of everything, btw. You’ll find we will buy less if not, or nothing at all.

Like with Playstation Plus. On the PS3 it’s beneficial to everyone that I am PS+, but they don’t get EVERY benefit that I get.

They can play any game on the PS3 I buy. They just can’t use certain Plus benefits, like the newer game save uploads, free avatars, etc.

A PSP is a personal device. PSN ID tied to a PSP, one can play the games the same way, right, with me as the Master Account, the Sub-Account below me should be granted privelages of PSP games that I own, bought however, and anything that can be done with them. But it’s not that way. So living with the system is like everything else, it can be seen from a million perspectives and not every way will suit every one, but something has to be put into place and let’s just hope that something better is created with PSN ID’s in the future with Sony Playstation things.

(It seems easy to also do things this way: turn off “automatic login” for the account. Then when you have a game to play online just change the login info … unfortunately it means you have to physically change things atimes, but it seems to work alright, so far)

I like them both. The tablet has an updated HTC Sense. The Calendar is nicer on the tablet, from the phone, with this one caveat:( It’s very annoying) All-Day Events in the calendar show up at the top of the day, also show in the agenda, but if you TOUCH one of them, that opens a “No Appointment” blah screen.’ Where are the details? In the event, but they aren’t accessible unless you EDIT the event, and for that you need to long-press on the event in another view, you can’t do anything with it in the “No Appointment” screen.

I don’t WANT to edit the event though, only VIEW the information.

On my phone the list of events for a day, the same All-Day Event shows in the list of things for the day, and if you touch such an event it opens a View Event screen of all the details for the event.

That is what I am missing. I hate how the tablet treats the very same events as the phone has, so differently. Same calendars, it’s not the old “HTC Calendar Bug from 2010″ It’s Sense 2.1 induced, no doubt, and I can find not ONE SINGLE entry online about it yet.

I’m assuming that the HTC Flyer (1st cousin of the HTC EVO VIEW, or little brother, whatever) has the same problem.

It’s not just my calendar, it’s also calendars I share that belong to someone else, they all work one way on my phone, great, and a different way on my tablet, not great, bad in fact.

I hate having to search and search endlessly and never come up with something. I use a billion different ways to describe what I’m looking for but can’t find anything but the old calendar bug about All-Day events from early 2010.

Treat this post as an entry into the arena for this HTC Sense 2.1 calendar bug (or design) –get rid of it HTC! Fix it so the details for the All-Day Event show when a basic touch is performed.

When I handed it off to my husband I fresh installed Windows 7 onto it. It seemed much better, in fact, the things I hated were gone. All new things cropped up over some time. BSOD’s and running hot … so it went on, I cautioned him about over-using it when he didn’t HAVE to, and such things to do to keep it cooler, blah, blah, blah.

At some point he got something else and the little laptop was now an extra one, and so I used it some, and put accounts on it for two of my children. It started getting worse at times, but not always. Eventually though, it had a graphics problem which was quick fix-able by pressing down on the keys all together above where the graphics on the motherboard is. It took the right touch, then would work after a re-start for days to hours, depending on ?.

I retired it, waiting to get more Artic Silver 5 and to think through what I could do and to basically FEEL like opening the laptop up.

I did do so last week. I took it all apart, looked at the motherboard, took the all in one assembled processor & heatsink and the graphic cover off, cleaned up the area with rubbing alcohol  then applied the AS5 and put the processor back on, and the soft sticky pad that goes over the graphic area. Screwed the whole thing down really tight. Put the laptop back together and the power was charging the battery, but the computer wouldn’t boot on at all. Realized that I hadn’t connected that one little thing … and had to unscrew and open up and connect … tried the boot up right then and there, and yes, it does work after all!

I have had to press on the graphic area a few times since, but hardly ever compared to before, and it’s not as “bad” of a messed up problem most of the time either.

It seems that others with similar laptops have “baked” the motherboard to re-glue the graphics to the motherboard. I couldn’t see any problem with that per-say, I mean, it needing that, if it’s evident from looking at it or not. All I know is that the laptop was so hot all the time before. It was so hot. The stuff that was on the processor before was really dry and flaky, so I’m sure it’s in a better state right now, good AS5 in there, not too much, not too little. It wasn’t dirty in there either. It was just old thermal grease and that’s it.

The graphics covered with the pad and then the heatsink, I just figured that having it as well press around it as possible plus the heatsink screwed in just tight enough was going to help.

The heat from the processor is so right next door to the graphics. I hate laptop design, in so many ways. Anyhow, just getting 5 years out of one is a feat, and I have done so with more than I want to count.

Sometime I may get a copper sheet to put over the processor, as in the penny fix, but with a sheet of copper instead. As it is, temps for the cores are in the high 30′s up to 42°c idle, going up higher with browsing, video skyrockets it, but that is steady into the 60′s at most. It hasn’t gone higher.

The processor is rated to go to 115°c … the laptop is performing alright for basic use in schooling for my children and usually the graphics problem crops up when turning the laptop on from on off state. So it’s not a problem that forces a shutdown really.

Time will tell.