Tweaking MySQL

MySQL disk cache
Tuning server parameters

Google Goals

Documents on Google's internal company goals have been leaked to Google Blogoscoped

Ubuntu 6.10 - development release

Ubunto 6.10, codenamed "Edgy Eft", is now available for testing. Changes include an improved init bootup sequence, Firefox 2.0, TomBoy, Gnome 2.16 and many more.

The New Atheism

I dont normally post stuff on religion or philosophy on this blog, but this article on The New Atheism from Wired magazine was too good to let pass.

"The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith."

Read it all.

Friday linkdump

Space colony art from the 1970s
77 million paintings by Brian Eno
The world via webcam
very cool visualisation of the planet
12 best movie pitches ever
Five simple steps to designing with colour
Contains No News
A blogger deletes the fluff from the CNN home page and is left with hardly any real news.
Leonardo Da Vinci's ten best ideas
Turn your iPod into a DVR

Linkdump

The failure of Friendster
interesting
SETI Institute creates the Carl Sagan Center
That was the "major announcement"
Let's Go : Second Life
A Wired guide
The Good News about GooTube
Nevada to vote on marijuana legalisation
Growers and sellers to be licensed and regulated
Gmail suggest
Vote for new Gmail features
Letter to EU warns against open source
Lobby lobby lobby
EU considering regulating video bloggers
Pay a tax to host a video blog?
WoW: A View from the Top
Ex WoW player writes about his addiction to it
In Orbit (pic)
stunning Nasa photo
Photoshop : How to age people 20 years
Tutorial
Whats so special about the number 1729?
Quite a lot - via Kottke
An earth without people
No trace left after 100,000 years
Hans Reiser arrested
On suspicion of murder

Major SETI announcement due?

Via Digg

Signals from the centre of the galaxy are rumoured to have been detected.

Restored ME-262

Filmed at the ILA 2006 in Berlin.

This is a test posting from Google Docs

Google Code search

Jason Kottke has a list of interesting Google code search finds.

Insane traffic in India

Unbelievable - and nobody has a crash either.

Google Buys YouTube

More here over at Google blogoscoped

"Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community."

North Korean nuclear test

USGS Earthquake data

Photos of North Korea - taken by a Russian tourist.

Google Maps - Australian lake of custard

Here on google maps

Rumours - Google to buy Youtube?

Here at Techcrunch

Rumoured price is $1.6 billion.

Google Video versus YouTube - analysis of traffic levels. Needless to say, YouTube is vastly more popular.

How to save YouTube videos to your hard drive.

Google Maps - North Korean prison camp?

Located here in the north east corner of North Korea.

Further information:
NBC on the N.Korean gulags
Reactions to Camp 22 reports

Update:
This satellite photo of a N.Korean prison camp is from U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea.
Here it is on on Google Maps

Google Earth & Maps updates

Via: Google Sightseeing

On October 3rd, we updated Google Maps and Google Earth with the following new imagery:

- Cross Plains, Texas
- the whole state of Minnesota, South Carolina, North Dakota, Missouri (updated to 2005), Idaho, Maryland, and now full coverage for the entire state of Texas
- Updates to Florida (most of the state covered now)
- 15 high-resolution cities in Germany
- update for London, 2006 data at 10cm
- South Georgia Island (courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey)
- Albany, OR; Lubbock, TX; Port Townsend, WA; Portage County, OH; Trumball County, OH
- 32 Digital Globe high-resolution cities (updates and new coverage)

In addition there was a significant update to the regular Digital Globe imagery all over the world.

Enjoy!

Updates I've found (so far):
Cork city ,Ireland
Limerick, Ireland
Wodonga, Australia - half the town is lucious green, the other half in drought.
Villach , Austria is now hi-res.
Pyongyang, North Korea - new imagery, brighter colours.
Hoeryong, North Korea - home of the infamous Camp 22

Doodle 4 Google

If you live in the UK you can vote in the latest Doodle 4 Google competition. Pick your favourite doodle (there are 30) from 3 age groups.

That's a Numberwang!

Linkdump

Do newspapers have a future?
Google Reader redesigned
More like Gmail
Richard Dawkins discussing his new book
The God Delusion
Physicists discover structure of brain cell same as entire universe
PC Magazine's top 99 undiscovered websites
Blueball Machine