Friday, December 31, 2004

Tsunami videos & donations

There are lots of torrent links and direct links to video files on these sites:
Wizbang
WaveofDestruction.org
Cheese and Crackers
PunditGuy.com

New York Times - flash required - infographics and animations on the tsunami plus photos.

Donation Links (UK & Ireland):
British Red Cross via Amazon
Irish Red Cross
Google
Oxfam
Disasters Emergency Committee

Phuket tsunami blog

Rick Von Feldt describes first hand what happened when the tsunami hit Phuket. He's inviting people to contribute their experiences - send stories/accounts to rvonfeldt AT yahoo DOT com.

Tsunami before and after sat images

Globalsecurity.org has posted a series of before and after satellite images of Aceh, Indonesia.

Ambassador: Aceh Death Toll May Hit 400,000

I came across this report via technorati.
Quote:

The death toll in Acheh, the region worst hit by last Sunday's tsunami, may exceed 400,000 as many affected areas could still not be reached for search and rescue operations, Indonesia's Ambassador to Malaysia Drs H. Rusdihardjo said Thursday.

He said the estimate was based on air surveillance by Indonesian authorities who found no signs of life in places like Meulaboh, Pulau Simeulue and Tapak Tuan while several islands off the west coast of Sumatera had "disappeared".

Thursday, December 30, 2004

BBC - On This Day
1994: Gunman kills two women at abortion clinic
Two women are shot dead and at least five others injured after a gunman opens fire at two neighbouring abortion clinics.
2002: Diana Ross arrested for drink-driving
Singer Diana Ross is stopped by the police for drinking and driving after her car is seen swerving across a road.
1958: Castro's rebels edge closer to capital
Thousands die in the bloodiest fighting in Cuba's history as rebels threaten to overthrow the military regime of President Batista.
1971: Iranians deported from Iraq
Some of the approximately 60,000 Iranian men, women and children expelled from Iraq in the past few days try to make their way home.
1986: Coal mine canaries made redundant
More than 200 canary birds are to be phased out of Britain's mining pits and replaced by hand-held gas detectors.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Tsunami videos

Waxy.org has posted links to amateur video footage of the recent tsunami disaster in the Indian ocean.

Where are the dead animals?

Sri Lankan officials stunned by lack of animal carcasses

No elephants killed - not even a dead rabbit. Somehow animals sensed the tsunami approaching and fled to higher ground. The finding has stunned Sri Lankan wildlife experts.

Friday, December 24, 2004

Cassini : Huygens probe



Saturn's largest moon, Titan, will soon get its first visitor from Earth. A European space probe is to split off on Christmas from its U.S. mothership for a three-week long descent to the mysterious, murky moon, the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere.
NASA press release
Google news search on Cassini

Thursday, December 23, 2004

2004 Google Zeitgeist

Google have produced their year-end the 2004 zeitgeist , detailing the most popular searches for the year.

Linkdump

Small Asteroid Passes Between Satellites and Earth (SPACE.com)
Dutch govt ends exclusive MS upgrade talks
Scott McNealy
Top 100 Toys From The 70s
Mozilla Lightning to Challenge Outlook
MPAA Goes After More Bittorrent Site Operators
Thunderbird and Firefox Ported to SkyOS
Mars Volcanoes May Still Erupt
Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience
Internet Sharing using a linux box
Knoppix slims down Linux Live CD
Browsers Preferred by Weblog Readers

BBC - On This Day
1972: Earthquake wreaks devastation in Nicaragua
Ten thousand people are feared dead after a two-hour earthquake rips through the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.
1956: Jubilation as allied troops leave Suez
The United Nations Emergency Force takes over in Egypt after British and French forces withdraw from Port Said and Port Fuad ending the Suez Crisis.
1992: Queen's Christmas speech leaked
The BBC investigates a leak which led to the Queen's Christmas speech being published in a national newspaper.
1986: Sakharov comes in from the cold
The Soviet Union's most prominent dissident, Andrei Sakharov, has returned to Moscow after almost seven years of internal exile.
1964: Beeching to leave British Railways
Dr Richard Beeching who instigated major and controversial changes to the rail network will quit, says the government.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Poland delays EU Software Patent law

Poland halts software patents

"Against all expectations, the final vote on the European software patents directive was postponed this afternoon. The Polish Minister of Science and Information Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, made a special journey to Brussels to demand that the directive be dropped from the agenda."

More info here

Ministry of Science and IT Poland
Email your thanks and support to: dip AT mnii DOT gov DOT pl

The Unofficial Fluxbox Faq

Mandrake Users regular, Iphitus, has put together a great Fluxbox faq with lots of hints, tips and info about this great lightweight window manager.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Torvalds : a Solaris skeptic

CNet interview Linus Torvalds about Sun turning Solaris into an open source project. He doesn't mince his words, calling it a "joke".
Slashdot discussion here

Mandrake Live CD
How to make your own live CD distro based on Mandrake

Time archives going back to 1923 are online - full articles available to subscribers.

Google doodle

Monday, December 20, 2004

IPW2200 Wireless on Mandrake 10.1 - HP nx9030 - SOLVED

I posted this on MandrakeUsers.org - i've now got wireless working on my HP Nx9030 laptop
Here's my posting on the solution:

*********************************************************************
Your mileage may vary , but this is my situation

1. Fresh 10.1 Official install

Set /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth1 ONBOOT=no

This will prevent eth0 and eth1 confusion if you have eth0 network card set to run off your work ethernet and eth1 to run off wireless at home.


note: su root when doing console level stuff.

2. Install kernel source via urpmi ( doing uname -r will tell you what mandrake kernel you are using.)

2. Download Buchan Milne ipw2200 dkms rpm

http://plf.zarb.org/~bgmilne/dkms/ipw2200-dkms-0.15-1mdk.noarch.rpm

3. Download latest firmware from
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

Select 0.17 current firmware - download the gzipped tar file

tar -xvzf firmware file.

5.copy firmware files ( they end in .fw) to /lib/hotplug/firmware (create firmware dir if it doesnt exist) and /etc/firmware (read somewhere that this can solve some problems)

6. now urpmi ipw2200-dkms-0.15-1mdk.noarch.rpm

Buchan Milnes ipw2200 package will install and do a bunch of perl stuff.

7. Go to Mandrake Control Center - Services - check that hotplug is set to start at boot - turn it on as well.

8 Reboot.

9. ifup eth1

10. Browse - you are now wireless.

NOTE: your own DHCP, static, gateway etc settings need to be set in ifcfg-eth1
If you dont want to use DHCP, /etc/resolv.conf is where you put your DNS server settings.


Here's my ifcfg-eth1 (home, wireless)
DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.1.46
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
ONBOOT=no
HWADDR=00:0e:35:7a:16:19
METRIC=10
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no
WIRELESS_MODE=Managed
WIRELESS_ESSID=any

UPSHOT is this is all you need to get an Intel 2200 working:

1. buchan milne rpm 2. kernel source 3. firmware 4. hotplug enabled 5.dkms enabled.

(dkms and hotplug are enabled as default in fresh mandrake 10.1 install - just saying this in case you have switched them off)

Lego David Blaine in a box

LinkDump

US ISP wins $1bn damages from spammers
SuprNova.org ends, not with a bang but a whimper
The BitTorrent P2P file-sharing system
MS plugs weak XP firewall
Game Industry Bigger Than Hollywood
Linux To Ring Up $35B By 2008
TorrentBits.org and SuprNova.org Go Dark
Linux Music Blossoms with Rosegarden
phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management
Free as in Freedom
Browsers Preferred by Weblog Readers
Yahoo News was most cited news source by blogs in 2004. RSS a factor?
Comment Spammers Have Blogs of Their Own

Google Christmas logo

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Langer joins the Collins Living Dictionary

Collins Word Exchange accepts the Irish slang word, Langer

"Well today has been the official launch of Collins Word Exchange and one word has stood out among everybody's fantastic submissions. Hundreds of Irish Word Exchange users have put up a massive fight to see the word 'langer' in the dictionary. Jeremy Butterfield, Editor in Chief of Collins English Dictionaries was astounded by the popularity of the word: I have never seen such passion about a single word before. We have fast tracked it straight into the Living Dictionary as it so obviously deserves a place. This is exactly what the Word Exchange was built for and we are awed by the positive response we have had from Irish word fans."

ipw2200 firmware

plf.zarb.org is down right now. you can get the ipw2200 and 2100 firmware packages from here

they are : ipw2100-firmware-1.2-1mdk and ipw2200-firmware-2.0-1mdk

Mandrake 10.1 on a Sony Vaio

Excellent page here on installing Mandrake 10.1 on a Sony Vaio - very detailed and comprehensive.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Highest res image ever taken of Dione
Layers in Titan athmosphere pictured

History repeating itself?
Major climate change occurred 5200 years ago - evidence mounting that it could occur again.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

BBC - On This Day
1984: Gorbachev visit to Britain a 'success'
Mikhail Gorbachev, the man widely tipped as the next leader of the Soviet Union, holds five hours of talks with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
1969: MPs vote to abolish hanging
MPs vote by a big majority for the permanent abolition of the death penalty for murder.
1955: Queen opens London Airport terminal
Her Majesty inaugurates "The Queen's Building", part of the new central terminal area built to accommodate increasing numbers of air passengers.
2001: Thousands rally for Scots countryside
Thousands of countryside campaigners are on the streets of Edinburgh in the largest demonstration of its kind ever witnessed in Scotland.
1977: Queen opens 'tube' link to Heathrow
The Queen unveils the new underground link from central London to Heathrow - the first from a capital city to its major airport.

Ask Google Images a question

Shinyfire.com stumbles across an interesting game - ask google images a question, with the first image being an answer. (thanks to Google Blogoscoped for finding this)

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Wireless Linux - Mandrake HOWTO
Mandrake 10.1 HowTo , written by Dave Jarvis.

dhcpcd wlan0 to grab ip address from dhcp server
MU wireless discussion
Another thread

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

LinuxElectrons.com : wireless notes
ndiswrapper and more

Ndiswrapper clean up
Mandrake 10.1 has old ndiswrapper stuff - here's instructions on how to totally remove it before
installing the newer version

Monday, December 13, 2004

HP nx9030 laptop


I got a new laptop today: the HP nx9030.

UPDATE: First I tried out Knoppix 3.4 - this booted into KDE , but there were some kernel oops messages during the boot.It failed to detect the ethernet card. I then installed Mdk 10.0 , but X didnt load when i rebooted. No matter - i'm grabbing the 10.1 isos images right now.

Mandrake 10.1 comes with built-in Centrino wi-fi support and extended laptop support.Mandrake 10.1 official product page

IBM - Burning CDs on Linux from the command line
Jeepsters commandline CD burning page
Lots of handy commands.

Graphics : Intel Extreme Graphics 2 : Linux drivers by Intel

Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Driver for Linux

Mouse / pointing device:Touchpad with vertical scroll bar
Sound: AC Link audio
Network: Integrated 10/100 NIC; 56K Mini PCI data/fax modem

Official HP product page
Detailed hardware specifications

PubSub
Linkage popularity checker
Ten CSS tricks you may not know
CSS Nuggets
whats that song
Uses the amazon api
Google Suggest
Fresh out of the Labs

Saturday, December 11, 2004

San Francisco in ruins

Fascinating 1906 aerial photos of the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, taken by George R. Lawrence. Click on the panoramic images to get a higher res version.

Friday, December 10, 2004

Fluxbox bag of links

Fluxbox How To
Lots of info about customising Fluxbox
Dockapp warehouse
Dock apps for Flux and other X11 window managers
ThemeDepot Fluxbox themes
Newsforge review of Flux from 2002
Linux.org: Using Fluxbox
Lynucs.org - Fluxbox screenshots

Thursday, December 09, 2004

BBC - On This Day
1973: Sunningdale Agreement signed
Tripartite talks on Northern Ireland end in an historic agreement to set up a Council of Ireland.
1996: Guilty verdict on school machete attacker
A man who attacked three children and four women with a machete is found guilty of attempted murder.
1992: American marines land in Somalia
American forces land in Somalia to begin humanitarian operation in famine-stricken country.
1987: Gatting row halts play in Pakistan
The England cricket tour hangs in the balance as a row erupts between England captain Mike Gatting and the umpire Shakoor Rana.
1957: Post Office issues Christmas warning
The Post Master General kicks off a campaign urging the public to send their Christmas cards in good time.

Alan Cox barred from software patent meeting
Kernel hacker and OSS advocate not invited by UK government.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

LinkDump

Scientists Make Phone That Turns Into a Sunflower (Reuters)
New Comet Now Visible to Naked Eye (SPACE.com)
Earth
IBM CEO
Dell turns on too pricey Red Hat
Google News
Study: PCs make kids dumber
Massive Layoffs At AOL
The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail
Upgrading to FreeBSD 5.3
Fashionistas meet penguinistas
Review: The LC2100 LinuxCertified Laptop
The Most Hated Advertising Techniques, on Yahoo
But we

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

LinVDR 0.7

Slashdot mention that LinVDR 0.7 has been released - its a very small Linux distro that turns a normal PC with a DVB video card into a personal video recorder (PVR).

Ten axioms of computing? Call them Windows flaws

NewsForge | Ten axioms of computing? Call them Windows flaws
Newforge points out to John Dvorak that his Ten Axioms of Computing refers to Windows only problems.

Review of MEPIS
Review of the Debian based Mepis distro.

Quote seen on UseNet

"Ironically, Microsoft's efforts to deny interoperability of Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an environment in which Microsoft's programs interoperate efficiently only with Internet viruses."

Nyvalls RPMs
Extra RPMs for various Mandrake release. Comprehensive audio rpm archive

Flash iPod rumours lift Apple stock - ZDNet UK News

MySQL Gotchas
Handy reference.

Mandrake 10.1 official now available for download


Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official "Download" edition has just been released to a number of public FTP mirrors worldwide and through bitorrent. It is now also available as a DVD ISO image.

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3

All new 10.1 Official features are available at:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/101

Monday, December 06, 2004

Denver Post: Libertarian Linux goes mainstream

VnuNet: VHS to DVD
Analog to digital video conversion on a shoestring.
10 Most persistent design bugs
User interface annoyances.

Linux Toys: VHS to digital

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Sunday Linkdump

New York Changing
Fascinating side by side photos of New York in the 1930s and the present day.
100 science things to do before you die
"Swim in a bioluminescent lake, boil an egg with a mobile phone, or have a new species named after you.". I rather liked the idea of making ice cream with liquid nitrogen.
TV down, Internet up
Increased broadband in Western Europe is causing a decline in TV viewing ( and no wonder too....)

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Themarana

Theme Depot has loads of themes for IceWM , gkrellm, Blackbox, Fluxbox , KDE, Xfce and loads more.

Kiev panorama

360 panorama of the Ukrainian protests

Knoppix Games Edition

A games edition of Knoppix with graphics acceleration built in , and support for 30 games is due for release on the 6th of December.

Friday, December 03, 2004

RMS visits Venezuela,Colombia,Mexico

Microsoft yet again prove that they are always ripping off other people's ideas
More 'innovation' at work.

Sun submits Solaris to Open Source Initiative

Poetry in translation

Thursday, December 02, 2004

KDE 3.4 preview

In this article on OSDir.com , George Staikos , one of the core KDE developers, talks about the forthcoming KDE 3.4 release.

And at last, Konqueror will support Gmail - yeah!!!

Major improvements are:
KWallet no longer blocks Konqueror while waiting for a password.
Enhanced support for groupware servers, including Exchange 2000, OpenGroupware, Kolab 1 and 2, SLOX, Groupwise, and eGroupware
XFace support for associating faces with mail and news article. "Faces" is originally a plan 9 app - see screenshot here
Blogging and journal support
Major Kicker panel reworking, with support for hiding tray icons.


Mr.Staikos himself signs off with "I have to say I'm already addicted, and it's hard to imagine working without some of these new features."

I cant agree more.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Jesusland

Yes folks, after all those Jesusland maps, it had to happen. Somebody has gone and set up the official Government of Jesusland website

How the NHS sold its choice

The Register has an indepth article on the implications of the recently signed NHS/Microsoft deal, rumoured to be worth a cool £500 million over 9 years.

Quote:
"The NHS, the "largest procurer of IT services in the world" is now locked into Windows and Microsoft Office for nine years; its IT suppliers, if they wish to remain its IT suppliers, must also lock themselves in, and anyone working with the new NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has effectively had Windows chosen for them.

Hutton and the Department of Health however show little sign of grasping the full consequences of what they're doing. In the Commons Hutton has repeatedly painted a rosy picture of the choice-filled future that the NPfIT will bring, while the program itself is relentlessly concentrating power in the hands of a few chosen suppliers and driving choice out of the system as the network extends, culling the very suppliers that Hutton lists as "approved". The latest example, where choice now comes down to one single supplier, just takes the process to its illogical, unsatisfactory conclusion. For nine years."

BBC - On This Day
1990: Tunnel links UK and Europe
Britain and France are joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel is removed.
1943: Allies united after Teheran conference
Winston Churchill, President Franklin D Roosevelt and Marshall Joseph Stalin make their first joint declaration against the Axis Powers.
1973: Israel's founding father dies
Israel's flags fly at half-mast after former Israeli statesmen David Ben-Gurion dies.
1986: Surprise inquiry into Guinness affairs
Guinness shares plunge by £300m as the government order an inquiry into the affairs of the company.
1965: Sweeping changes to British farming
The government puts forward a plan to improve the lot of both farmers and consumers by encouraging intensive farming.

Building disaster into the network: how UK.gov does IT

In depth opinion from El Reg's John Lettice in light of recent I.T. disasters in the UK government sector.

MySQL 4.1 and GIS spatial extensions

In this article Anders Karlsson talks about the GIS storage capabilities in MySQL 4.1
MySQL 4.1 spatial extensions reference
Open Geospatial Consortium

Google seeks a Wild Linux Tamer

ZDnet are reporting that Google are recruiting in the UK and Europe.

"In a Google goody bag handed out to attendees, the company gave an idea of the skills it is seeking for the Dublin Swat Team: a Site reliability manager; people with skills in Unix systems and MySQL administration; spam detection and prevention methods; high availability systems architecture and administration; Java application troubleshooting; deeply technical project management; large-scale systems administration automation; Perl; and a Wild Linux Tamer."

Wild Linux Tamer???

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

More UK Gov I.T. woes

UK gov £50 million site is useless crock
Its a Microsoft .Net based site (no surprise there so)

Lamppix

Lamppix is a Live CD based on Knoppix and Damn Small Linux with Apache,MySQL,PHP,Perl installed. It allows you to easily run your PHP driven web pages off a bootable CD.

Linkdump

Sea Level Rise simulator
interesting...
Isle of Man goes Microsoft
Mixed environment to go totally Microsoft by 2006.
Cold War game due out
And on Linux too.
Korea: email dying out
Only used formally or by less tech savvy people - blogs, IMs and SMS replacing it
Finnish gov says dont use IE
IFRAME flaw worries
FBI seek Nmap logs
NMap creator asked repeatedly for his web server logs

Freemind
Mind mapping software.

Monday, November 29, 2004

SCO website hacked


SCO website hacked
Originally uploaded by kde-head. The whole world is laughing.

Handy commands

lspcidrake [list]
lspci -v [in depth pci device list]
lsmod [list]
ps -ef [dump process list to screen, like 'top' but not continuous]
fuser -v /dev/* [list]
ifconfig -a [same as 'ipconfig' under Windows]
service -s [show current service status]
apropos net [search man pages, in this case for all commands]
netstat -p
netstat -t
ls /proc
more /proc/meminfo
lsof [list open files]
ldd [print shared library dependencies e.g. ldd /usr/bin/perl ]
lshw [list hardware]
cal [ calendar]
modinfo [what kernel modules are listed]

Lego Church

The Lego Church

MySQL CEO: We're as greedy as anyone else

IE Exploit code

XP SP2 Security Bypass
Circumvent SP2 security by using simple javascript.
Internet Explorer IFRAME tag exploit
Full disclosure code.

Linux gaining as Windows alternative

Cartoon - Life before the Internet
SANS point out that Target are
selling marijuana and hookers
Target is using the Amazon database - Marijuana is a book title, and Hooker is a VHS video

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Revolution blogging

A Ukrainian is blogging the revolution over there as it happens.

Ukrainian orange revolution

Pictures of the Ukrainian demonstrations are starting to appear on flickr.com taken by people who are actually there in person.

Friday, November 26, 2004

Massive IT failure at UK gov

The Register and Slashdot have picked up on that UK gov outage story. 80,000 machines got the BSOD - the biggest I.T. failure in UK government history. Bet the UK government is regretting awarding the £500 million contract to EDS/Microsoft.

Friday Linkdump
Lives - Linux video editing
Open source VJing
Deutsche Bahn migrating servers to Linux
Full steam ahead
Reg: Social Engineering
User is the weakest link.
EDS and Microsoft cock up
Windoze upgrade knocks out big UK gov department. Bofra worm attack maybe?

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Bash prompt tips

From IBM, great article about the bash prompt and how to configure it - very handy.

Slashdot - Westerners Migrating to India for Jobs

Slashdot:Westerners Migrating to India for Jobs
Pay sucks , but living costs are ultra-cheap.

Firefox web developer extension

It installs a new toolbar packed full of handy web dev stuff

Linux Today: Good News to be thankful for

Firefox on the rise, Linux server sales increasing exponentially.

Mandrake 10.1 Kwin Shadow Hack

Mdk 10.1 Kwin drop shadow hack
KDE 3.2.3 , Mandrake 10.1 only RPMs - adds a shadow effect on open KDE windows.

OS X Fonts
Zipfile containing Lucida Grande and Apple Garamond fonts. In KDE , open up the zip in Konqueror, and drag the fonts to font:/Personal in another Konqueror window.

Bofra exploit tied to 'massive botnet'

The Register reports that an attack on ad-serving company Falk that redirected some Reg readers on Saturday towards a site running malicious code may be part of a much bigger attack.

Vital Security report that "a group of hackers (perhaps even a criminal gang) is hacking web servers all over the Net and installing root kits that dynamically inject code into the pages served from the compromised web servers".

It is "similar to Download_Ject, only this time it works on Apache Servers rather than Windows.Using Iframes, a number of sites install anything up to 8MB worth of exploits on a users machine - viruses, trojans, scripts, malware packages - you name it, you'll end up with it."

Spyware warrior: Major exploit underway

South African TV show evangelises open source
First ever TV show entirely dedicated to open source.Slashdot mention it too

Feeeds
Selection of rss news sources presented in html , from Blogoscoped
Here's my RSS feed page
Something i rustled up earlier - it uses MagpieRSS
Reg: Don't Offshore , Pay us instead
Knoppix Hacks
O'Reilly hack book
MyAKDC for Mandrake
New windeco for Mdk 10 and 10.1

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

The Power of Blogs Inverted

Or how blogs can make one persons name completely toast.

It all started with myself coming across a posting about the first ever Google news bomb on the excellent Google Blogoscoped this morning. Blogoscoped picked up on this posting by John Batelle about how the rants of the owner of msmobile.com about Russell Beattie had turned up when you searched for Russell Beattie on Google News.

Turns out that Google news had inadvertently accepted a disparaging and personally insulting article about Russell Beattie (of Yahoo Mobile) posted by the the owner of msmobiles.com , Jacek Rutkowski. Then I noticed a Threadwatch link about it popping up on Jeremy Zadwodny's blog - looked like the story was spreading, rapidly. So, over to the man himself, Russell Beattie, to explain the whole sorry situation

Turns out that this Jacek character is an ex-Nokia engineer , fired from Nokia for divulging trade secrets, then turned rabidly anti-Nokia and pro-Microsoft, but then pissed off Microsoft by giving Microsoft employees points on their "pro-Microsoft" quotients.

According to Russell Beattie, "he's done much to have me dislike him, starting back in 2000 when I had the displeasure of being on a Sun email list called KVM-Interest where he would rant and use racial slurs attacking people who disagreed with him. Yes, he was once a Java fan, now he's this rabid Microsoft guy. But don't let this reflect badly on Microsoft, they don't like him either and won't invite him to their Mobius conferences any more since he went to one of the first ones, took pictures of everyone and did dosiers on their Pro Microsoft quotient."

It's gotten so weird that this guy has even called Russell at home. No joke.

I wonder if Jacek will do a counter-attack?

Doubtful - he's deleted those stories that are linked to from Google News. Yup - that's the power of the interweb, coming home to roost.

STOP PRESS:
Here's the Jacek commentary that made it into Google news captured by another blog.

Morsel of Links

Wish-lists added to Froogle
All you want for Christmas
The first Google news bomb
Personal attacks get into Google news.
Google news RSS feed
Third party hack that turns your Google news search term into an RSS feed - VERY useful.

Link Dump

Wired : Newspapers should really worry
Tired:dead-tree news wired: digital news
Linux server sales hit new high
$1 billion of Tux in the 3rd quarter of 2004
OpenOffice & Firefox coming to retail stores
Linspired...

BBC - On This Day
1963: Kennedy 'assassin' murdered
Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of murdering President Kennedy, is himself shot dead in a Dallas police station.
1989: New era for Czechoslovakia
The entire leadership of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia resigns to make way for democratic changes.
1991: Giant of rock dies
Freddie Mercury dies aged 45, just one day after he publicly admitted he was HIV positive.
1974: Six charged over Birmingham pub bombs
Police charge six men in connection with the Birmingham pub bombings three days ago.
1998: Queen's speech spells end for peers
Under new proposals hereditary peers will lose their right to sit and vote in the UK Parliament's upper chamber.

Perfect fonts on Mandrake 10.1

Great guide here on how to tweak Mandrake 10.1 to get the best font display. I had font problems after upgrading from 10.0, and i found this guide very helpful.

Software patents "a deceptive, dangerous and democratically illegitimate proposal"


Torvalds, Widenius,Lerdorf say no to software patents
Linux Torvalds (Linux creator), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) and Michael Widenius (MySQL) have posted a statement addressed to the EU Council regarding their opposition to the proposed software patents directive, calling it undemocratic and against the interests of the European economy.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Spanish eBayers go on strike

The Register reports that a revolt by Spanish eBayers has spread with solidarity messages from Belgium,Germany and the U.S.

LinkDump

Vodafone Ireland puts price tag on 3G
Bofra exploit tied to
Best Live Linux For Christmas Giving?
Will Open Source Solaris Kill Linux?
Install KNOPPIX LiveCD on Hard Drive
Blogs as Professional Lubricant

Monday, November 22, 2004

Rasmus Lerdorf Laptop Stolen

The creator of PHP has had his laptop stolen from a PHP conference in Paris. What makes it worse is that there was hardly any "non-geek" traffic at it. It's an IBM T42 with Debian installed - if anyone has any info on it mail me , leave a comment here or leave a comment on Ramus's blog.


Iframe Exploit write up by LURHQ
Detailed technical writeup on the IFrame IE exploit that is doing the rounds
Netcraft : The Register amongst many sites affected by banner ad Iframe exploit
Register apologises
Their ad serving company Falk AG infected with Bofra/Iframe exploit.
Who profits from security holes?
Visiting just one site resulted in 16 pieces of spyware being installed.

LinkDump

Quantum Astronomy: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (SPACE.com)
NASA Launches Black Hole Hunter (AP)
A Year of Firsts for the ISS (SPACE.com)
Bofra exploit hits our ad serving supplier
Judge dismisses keylogger case
UK boffins sniff for Higgs boson
230mph Electric Car
Worm Exploit Distributed by Advertising Network
Author of Linux Patent Study Contradicts Ballmer
My workstation OS: Mepis Linux
K3b?Easy CD Burning Program for Linux
Ease of use, nice look: Mandrake 10.1
Russell will be Yahooing Soon
Yahoo RSS Intentions Are No Secret

Friday, November 19, 2004

That funny Steve Ballmer video thing
Developers developers developers

Mandrake 10.1 upgrade - crappy fonts solved

After tweaking my Xorg config , certain sites like The Register were being displayed with blocky fonts.



Here's the solution - obviously , your mileage may vary.

1. remove the xorg-x11-100dpi and xorg-x11-75dpi packages (they have crappy helvetica and serif fonts)

2. download and install the ms-font rpms from http://webperf.org/msfonts/
urpmi msfonts-1.2.1-1.noarch.rpm
urpmi msfonts-style-1.2.1-1.noarch.rpm

3. edit /etc/fonts/local.cf - add all of your font directories
here's mine:

/usr/share/fonts/msfonts
/usr/share/fonts/msfonts-style
/usr/share/fonts/default/ghostscript
/usr/share/fonts/ttf
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western
/usr/share/fonts/freefont
/usr/share/fonts/Dustismo
/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/msttcorefonts
/usr/local/share/fonts
/usr/share/fonts
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts

4. fc-cache -f -v

5. restart your window manager (ctrl+alt+backspace )
Voila! No more crappy fonts when looking at The Register in Konqueror:

Newsforge: Linux is not Red Hat and other Sun-isms debunked

Microsoft, IP and the WTO
Commentary from the Register - well worth reading.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

HP nx5000 laptop review
Comes with SuSe preloaded.
dot.KDE : HP delivers KDE on laptops
Interview with HP and lots of commentary

IBM - Inertia holding back Linux adoption in government

Zdnet report that senior IBM execs "have signalled that a few key government departments moving to Linux on the desktop will have a domino-like effect on the rest of the (UK) public sector."

The best place in the world to live is....

Ireland
"Ireland is the best place to live in the world, according to a quality of life assessment by Economist magazine."

The U.S. came 13th, while the UK languished at 29th.

HowTo: Getting perfect fonts on Mandrake 10.1

Introduction to Linux kernel modules

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

2.6 and the ide-scsi module
Article on background behind the ide-scsi module debate.

Mandrake 10.1 - Gimp 2


Mandrake 10.1 has the Gimp 2.0 in its package repository. However, if you upgrade from 10.0 using urpmi --auto-select, the old version 1.x of the Gimp is NOT upgraded to version 2

The solution is to first remove Gimp version 1.x ("Remove Software" or urpme gimp), and then install Gimp version 2 (urpmi gimp2 or "Install Software")

Gimp 2 in menudrake will be pointing at "gimp-remote-2.0" - change this to /usr/bin/gimp-2.0 . Save your menu, and you'll be able to start Gimp 2.
If you have a Gimp icon on one of your kicker panels, you'll find that this has also changed to "gimp-remote-2.0" - again, just change this to "/usr/bin/gimp-2.0"

Mandrake 10.1 upgrade - fuzzy font problem

Yesterday I upgraded my work desktop from Mandrake 10.0 to Mandrake 10.1 using Easy URPMI. Mandrake 10.1 has dropped the XFree X server and replaced it with the GPL'ed XOrg server. The problem with this is that after the upgrade , my fonts looked slightly fuzzy.

Konsole output with fuzzy fonts - note how the letter "o" isn't very crisp.

The solution was to edit /etc/fonts/local.cf

Konsole output after editing local.cf and restarting X. Note how the letter "o" in "isos" is much crisper in definition.

There's more information about tweaking XOrg on this ArchLinux wiki page

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Blogger internationalisation underway
French,German,Korean,Japanese,Italian,Spanish,Brazillian Portugeuse ,Chinese traditional & simplified

1 in 30,000 people fall for spam pitches

Trial shows how spammers operate

"As one of the world's most prolific spammers, Jeremy Jaynes pumped out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need.

In a typical month, prosecutors said during the trial, Jaynes might receive 10,000 to 17,000 credit card orders, thus making money on perhaps only one of every 30,000 e-mails he sent out. But he earned $40 a pop, and the undertaking was so vast that Jaynes could still pull in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead."

Monday, November 15, 2004

Mysterious Titan

Titan befuddles scientists
No methane oceans on Titan - could turn out to be a giant slurpee instead.

Solaris 10 released


Not open sourced yet - but cost is free , as in free beer

Acme Clone

Wily
A Linux clone of the Plan 9 Acme editor.

IP Whoring

Ex Microsoft employee sets up Intellectual Property company
This company doesnt make anything - only patent attorneys roam the hallways.Slashdot mention it.

Bye bye IE

Dear IE - i'm leaving you for good
Written like a love letter. Very funny.

Dow Jones buys Marketwatch website for $500 million
dot-com boom part 2?
NASA prepares scramjet for launch
7000 mph speed target.

Daniel Z. Freedman -Some beautiful equations of mathematical physics

Friday, November 12, 2004

Zoom Quilt

The Zoom Quilt - Flash as pure art

Wow!!!

Mars Express - Phobos picture


Mars Express sends postcard from Phobos

ESA press release here

MSN Search arrives with a "whuh?"

El Reg : Microsoft search arrives with a whuh?
Google's executives might be sleeping a little easier this weekend after Microsoft unveiled its much-hyped new search engine. It's fast, slick, and comes with a raft of interesting new features: confounding some expectations as surely as it confirms others. In short, Microsoft has produced a search engine that's better in almost every way than Google, except for one: its search results are terrible

WSJ : Microsoft late to search party

Dead Web

Ghost sites
Shows screengrabs of defunct websites from 1998 to 2004.

Mandrake 10.1 stuff

From the Mandrake 10.1 release notes:
"You now have the possibility to add extra media (CD or network) during the installation. This means that you can download only the disc 1 or the new mini disc 1 and add a network source to complete your packages list."

F*** The South dot com

An angry American liberal vents his spleen

Mandrake 10.1 review

Mandrake 10.1 official review
Lots of screenshots. Quote:

The Drake family has been expanded, for instance with drakroam, a tool for laptop users on the move to keep track of
different networks. Numerous draktools have improved, for instance the Mandrakelinux Control Center has a new (actually,
more or less reverted to the old) look, and the Software Management tools are now integrated into MCC instead of being
opened in their separate window. A new appearance is made by the network monitor on the system tray, for easy network
connectivity management, along with an applet for Mandrakeonline, a new Mandrakesoft (paid) service

We're Not Sorry

In the interests of balance, here's We're Not Sorry

XP SP2 - ten holes discovered

10 security holes found in Windows XP Service Pack 2
Internet Explorer at fault - time to switch to Firefox.

Easy Debian Install coming

Debian Sarge aims at easy installation

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Onion story

Nation's Poor win Election For Nation's Rich
Big thanks from Karl Rove and the ultra-rich of America.

MSNbomb?

MSN thinks that Google is more evil than satan

Bye bye Nullsoft

Death knell for WinAmp
Nullsoft all but finished off by AOL.
Register - Aol Axes Nullsoft
Slashdot mention it too

Linux Certified Thinkpads

IBM Thinkpads certified for Linux
A list by IBM showing what Thinkpad models are certified for Redhat and Suse.

Google Doubles

Google doubles index
Over 8 billion pages indexed.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Adwords Professionals


Google has launched the Adwords Professional programme , which is "Designed for professionals who currently manage or want to manage multiple AdWords client accounts, the Google Advertising Professionals programme can help you become a more successful ad manager – for free"

BBC - On This Day
1995: Nigeria hangs human rights activists
The writer and human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, has been executed in Nigeria despite worldwide pleas for clemency.
1997: British au pair freed after appeal
A British child-minder is freed from jail in the United States after her conviction for murdering a baby is reduced to manslaughter.
1982: Brezhnev rumours sweep Moscow
Speculation is growing that Leonid Brezhnev, who has ruled the Soviet Union for the past two decades, has died.
1960: Lady Chatterley's Lover sold out
Penguin's first run of the DH Lawrence's sexually explicit novel banned for more than 30 years sells out.

Linkdump

Mandrake make a profit
French Linux company is on the mend.
AOL four way split
Subscriber numbers in decline
Bofra worm on the loose
Targets Internet Explorer users - exploits new IFRAME vulnerability
Using Netstat
How to keep an eye on your Linux networking.
Bastille Linux 2.1.6-1.0 released
Makes your box uber-secure.
Katalog CD Organizer
Organise your CDs in KDE.

Prime Number curios

Prime number curios
A dictionary of the strange and curious properties of some prime numbers.

Prime number algorithms

Fun with prime numbers
Algorithms, programs to calculate primes on a bog standard PC.

Firefox Fever

Firefox ignites demand for alternative browser

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

BBC on Firefox launch
Google Firefox page
Mozilla Europe mirror site
The U.S. mozilla.org is currently being slash-dotted.
Firefox is here!

Firefox 1.0 released
Milestone release for the IE killer.

One standard , One Microsoft
Very worrying article on the Register on how the UK Health system has been locked into Microsoft for 9 years.

Monday, November 08, 2004

Novell release Linux desktop
Based on Suse and aimed at the corporate market.

LinkDump

Titan hangs on to its secrets
Pub landlord secures Vulcan for £15k
One standard, one Microsoft - how the NHS sold its choice
BT shells out £520m for Infonet
Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States
Google Image Index Just Not Updated
A look at Sun
LinuxCertified LC2430 Laptop Review
Google Image Search has that \"not so fresh\"feeling?

Sunday, November 07, 2004

BBC - On This Day
1989: Protests force out East German rulers
East German leader Egon Krenz prepares to choose a new government after mass resignations of Communist ministers.
1974: Police hunt Lord Lucan after murder
Detectives are searching for British aristocrat Lord Lucan following the death of his children's nanny last night.
1984: Four more years for Reagan
Ronald Reagan wins a second term as US President in the biggest landslide since George Washington in 1792.
1972: Nixon takes second term by landslide
President Richard Nixon wins an overwhelming victory in the US presidential elections for a second term in the White House.
1956: Eisenhower re-elected with record vote
Eisenhower is returned to the White House with the biggest share of votes for 100 years.
1975: IRA kidnappers release industrialist
Dr Tiede Herrema, a Dutch industrialist kidnapped by the IRA more than a month ago, is freed.
1998: Oldest astronaut back on Earth
Senator John Glenn, the world's oldest astronaut, lands back on Earth after his historic nine-day mission.
2001: Billionaire mayor for New York
Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg is elected mayor of New York in the most expensive mayoral contest in US history.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

BBC - On This Day
1956: Allied forces take control of Suez
British and French troops protecting allied interests in the Suez Canal battle with Egyptian soldiers in the Canal Zone.
1996: 'Comeback Kid' wins second term
Democratic President Bill Clinton crushes Bob Dole but Republicans retain control of both Houses.
1999: Australia rejects republic
Australians reject a proposal to break ties with the British monarchy and become a republic.
1968: Nixon wins close contest for president
Richard Nixon finally emerges as the next president of the US narrowly beating Hubert Humphrey.
1986: Oil workers die in helicopter crash
A Chinook helicopter carrying oil rig workers plunges into the North Sea off the coast of Scotland.
1972: Pay and price freeze aims to curb inflation
The British Government impose controversial measures to try and halt spiralling inflation.

Friday, November 05, 2004

BBC - On This Day
1952: Landslide victory for Eisenhower
General Dwight D Eisenhower sweeps to victory in the American presidential elections with the largest number of popular votes ever recorded for a presidential candidate.
1991: Publisher Robert Maxwell dies at sea
The body of the millionaire newspaper publisher, Robert Maxwell, is found in the sea off the coast of Tenerife.
1967: Forty die in Hither Green rail crash
At least 40 people are killed and 80 hurt after a train derails in south-east London.
1984: Sandinistas claim election victory
Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista Front claims a decisive victory in the country's first elections since the revolution five years ago.
1978: Iran's PM steps down amid riots
Iran's Prime Minister Jaffer Sharif-Emani resigns after two days of virtual mob rule.


Venus and Jupiter conjunction tonight

Burning up the network
Kottke on election day overload.
Adobe forming a Linux strategy?
Flickr desktop shots
Search to speech results
Feeeds

Thursday, November 04, 2004

New map of America


Found on Flickr

BBC - On This Day
1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary
The Soviet air force bombs the Hungarian capital of Budapest and troops pour into the city in a massive dawn offensive.
1995: Israeli PM shot dead
The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
1979: Militants storm US embassy in Tehran
Militant Islamic students in Iran storm the US embassy in Tehran taking 90 people hostage.
1942: Rommel goes on the run at El Alamein
The German army in North Africa is in full retreat as the Eighth Army triumphs at the Egyptian town of El Alamein.
1992: Clinton beats Bush to the White House
Democrat Bill Clinton becomes the first baby-boomer United States president after he beats rival George Bush to the White House.
1980: Reagan beats Carter in landslide
Former Hollywood actor and Republican Ronald Reagan wins the US presidential elections by a huge majority.
1974: M62 bomber jailed for life
Judith Ward is convicted of an army coach bombing in which 12 people died.
Her conviction was quashed 18 years later.
1987: Millionaire's big plans for English landmark
Land's End in Cornwall has been sold for nearly £7m to the property tycoon, Peter de Savary.

LinkDump

BT crows about broadband numbers
Bush wins as Reps add seats in Congress
AOL loses 2m US customers
Online payment firm in DDoS drama
NHS Awards Contract to Microsoft
Programmers Hold Funerals for Old Code
Six Weeks with Ubuntu Linux

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Results

Here's a bunch of websites and blogs that'll give you rolling info as the results come in. Some are partisan , some aren't.

Resultron
Live updates from the DCCC (Democrat)
CNN Election 2004
CNN Balance of Power
CNN Election Scorecard
MyDD poll watcher
Howard Dean - Blog for America
NY Times
Real Clear Politics
The Nation
Blog The Vote
Electoral Vote Predictor
Daily Kos
Andrew Sullivan
Matt Drudge
Atrios
Guardian (UK) - US Election 2004
BBC Vote USA 2004
Yahoo Full Coverage
Yahoo - Blog roundup
Wonkette

BBC - On This Day
1986: US hostage freed in Beirut
David Jacobsen, an American held hostage in Beirut by Muslim fundamentalists, is released after 17 months in captivity.
1995: Ex-minister charged with apartheid murders
The former South African defence minister, General Magnus Malan, is arrested and charged with murder.
2000: Schools watchdog Woodhead resigns
The controversial chief inspector of schools in England, Chris Woodhead, steps down, to the delight of teachers' unions.
1951: 6,000 British troops flown into Egypt
The final phase of the largest troop airlift since the war brings reinforcements in to quell unrest in the Canal Zone.

Election Day

Slashdot - Monitoring the U.S. Election results online
Ebay - Vulcan for sale
RSS button maker
Gmail button generator

Monday, November 01, 2004

Electoral-vote.com webmaster revealed
Turns out its none other than Minix inventor, Andrew Tannenbaum!

BBC - On This Day
1984: Violence follows Gandhi killing
Rioting breaks out in parts of India following yesterday's assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
1966: Viet Cong bombs Saigon
At least eight people are killed including an American officer when Viet Cong artillery shells the South Vietnamese capital.
1970: Nightclub inferno 'wipes out generation'
A fire at a nightclub in France has killed 142 people, most of them teenagers.
1990: Howe resigns over Europe policy
The UK's deputy Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, has resigned after disagreements over the government's Europe policy.

Google U.S. Election zeitgeist

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Cassini tour explained

Detailed article here describing the Cassini tour of Saturn, with associated graphics and tables.

Breaking the network barrier with KDE

In this article George Staikos talks about KDE's desktop network handlers, including overlooked ones suchs as man:// , audiocd:// and fish://

EU Constitution

EU constitution PDF
BBC - What the EU Constitution says

Strange Titan stumps scientists

Wired - Titan photos pose new questions
Titan is very alien say scientists

Friday, October 29, 2004

Tethys

Image of Tethys taken by Cassini on October 28th

Bruce Perens open source series
Lots of PDF books to download

Evil clown face generator
Bizarre
Kottke on normalized data
Flickr mentioned
Pop-up stores
Here today gone tommorow.

Titan Radar images

Here and here

Yahoo design change

Yahoo have changed their front page design
Curiously , you get the new page design if you are using the Konqueror browser. Other browsers show the old page, with a link to the new beta design page

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Reg security report

Security Report - Windows versus Linux
Long article by the Register.

UK gov - Linux is viable
UK government experiences massive injection of clue

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Google buys Keyhole

Google announced today that it bought Keyhole a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital mapping company.

Amazing Titan

Latest Cassini images of Titan can be found here

Astonishing photos - its not confirmed just yet that we are looking at oceans of liquid methane/ethane in those Titan pictures as the Cassini team is awaiting further data.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Cassini - Titan encounter tonight

5 hours , 50 minutes to go

Cassini views Xanadu

Cassini countdown - 9 hours 55 minutes to Titan encounter

LinkDump

Cassini gives Iapetus a wide berth
NASA re-schedules Swift launch
Sony launches 1GB Flash MP3 player
Google-branded Firefox?
Linus on All Sorts of Stuff
Using a Linux-based home recording studio
How to build a home recording studio
Linus Torvalds Interview
Ubuntu 4.10, The Warty Warthog
Am I an Event Blogger?
Life in the Crazy Lane

Monday, October 25, 2004

Cassini - new Titan images


New Images of Titan released by Cassini

1 day 5 hours to close encounter with the Saturnian moon.

Jacob Nielsen: User Education is not the answer to security problems

Friday, October 22, 2004

LinkDump

Mars Reconsidered: New Data Raises Fresh Questions (SPACE.com)
Red Planet Bound: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (SPACE.com)
Cassini approaches Titanic flyby
Google Reports Increased Profits
Game Cube Linux kernel recompile
Plain Text Vulnerability Found In Linux

Quiz: Which file extension are you?

Murphys Law calculator

Windows error on giant billboard

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Microsoft using FreeBSD
Volunteers discover open source usage within Windows itself.

ebay

Man sells wedding invite on Ebay

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

High Performance MySQL reviewed


Slashdot review High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny and Derek J. Balling. It gets a big thumbs up.
Amazon UK link here
Amazon.com link here

Vnunet interview Microsofts Linux expert
Lots of marketing-speak.
LWN link to it
Lots of non marketing comments
KDE performance tips
Handy
Review of Motorola Linux phone
kernel in your pocket

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

French Govt takes MandrakeLinux to Africa
KDE at Linuxworld London

Konqi graphics updated - promo video debut

Monday, October 18, 2004

Rob Pike interview

Slashdot interview Rob Pike - co-creator of Plan 9 , now at Google.

Quote:
"We use a number of big (BIG!) piece parts like the Google File System (GFS) and MapReduce (see the paper by Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat in the upcoming OSDI http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html) to build massive engines for processing data. Using those pieces we can harness zillions of machines with a few keystrokes to attack a problem like indexing the entire internet. (OK, it's not quite that easy, but it's still amazing.) I have a daily test job I run to monitor the health of one of the systems I'm developing; it uses a week of CPU time but runs for only a few minutes of real time. "

Google is kicking our butt
A Microserf admits to Google addiction.

La Computer or El Computer?

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. ''House'' for instance, is feminine: ''la casa.'' ''Pencil,'' however, is masculine:
"el lápiz.''

A student asked, ''What gender is 'computer'?''

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender (''la computer''), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (''el computer''), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Google Glow Glass


Google Glow Glass
Originally uploaded by Peter Kaminski.
From the recent Gnomedex conference. Photo posted to flickr by Peter Kaminski.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Spooky Hollow


P9103698.JPG
Originally uploaded by CALIBRE.
This is a great shot of the River Lee flowing through the grounds of University College Cork.

Cork city in Ireland


18March-Cork 002
Originally uploaded by justinf.
Nice shot of the river Lee flowing through Cork city.

2003-July-15th-Cork 006


2003-July-15th-Cork 006
Originally uploaded by justinf.
just trying out the "blog this" feature in Flickr.

Friday, October 15, 2004

Flickr

My flickr album
Sunset in Menorca

Gates - IE holes not Microsoft's fault

Slashdot mention an interview with Bill Gates, where he blames others for IE security holes.

"Q: Speaking of security, Internet Explorer has had well-publicized holes... Gates: Understand those are cases where you are downloading third-party software"

Google desktop search launched


El Reg reports that Google have launched desktop search for Windows PCs.
Screenshots here
Blogoscoped mention it

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Spread the Fox

Firefox propanganda PDF posters here in various languages


Spot the Fox!
User submitted SpreadFirefox photo gallery.

LinkDump

Ancient Fossil Is Found on Danish Island (AP)
Lava Gives Mount St. Helens Eerie Glow (AP)
Fossil Hunters Find Sleeping Dinosaur in China (Reuters)
Brits scan skies for impact threats
MS UK security chief moves to Accenture
ISS crew blasts off
U.S. Declares War on Intellectual Property Theft
Netscape Turns 10
Build a high-availability Linux Web server
Mandrake 10.1 Community Reviewed!
Integration: a real opportunity for Linux
So many worms, so little time
Genesis of a Linux guru
Richard Stallman Meets the World Scout Bureau
Honesty and Blogvangelism
The Community as a Platform, Part 2

Baby Koala is Sydney zoo star attraction
Nursed back to health and reared by zookeeper after rejection by mother.

Two hours from death?
Richard Stallman blogs about a recent car accident which killed a free software advocate.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Sun down under
Sun Micro on RedHat and IBM...

Seattle Times interview Linus
The alpha geek speaks.

22 new Windows flaws
The vole admits to lots of holes.
SANS on the vole holes
Yahoo! Profits! Triple!
Boom part two?
Life after Microsoft
Will the vole go into a hole?

Monday, October 11, 2004

The dread of logging on
Windows and spyware turns 68 year old off the internet.

LinkDump

Best Buy sells Motorola MPx220 smart phone
South Korean Music Retailers Dying
Slackware Likely To Drop GNOME Support
Knoppix from non-bootable CD-ROM
Ubuntu Multimedia HOWTO
Yahoo Added to NetNewsWire

Friday, October 08, 2004

Goollery

Goollery is an photo gallery web application that uses Gmail as back-end storage. Interesting concept , and it's pushes the idea of "Gmail as my internet hard drive in the sky" a bit further.
Example gallery here