uRandom
Fri 30th Mar 2007 @ 00:54 2007: Mark Thomas does it again
Mark Thomas does it again
There was a ridiculously narrow law brought in to restrict protests in Parliament Square, just because one bloke had protested there since before the Iraq invasion.
So Mark Thomas, an (IMHO) highly underrated, but very spot-on comedian, decided, in his unique way, to lampoon this law.
Thank you, Mark. Excellent work, as always.
MP3 Here
Sat 24th Mar 2007 @ 01:52 2007: MySpace
Is there a point to MySpace?
My answer was "I don't know", so I signed up, plugged it a little, and saw what happened.
AFAICT, nothing has happened. I hunted out a few "friends", and let nature take its course.
A few *nix geeks got in touch, so I added them.
Various desperados asked to be "added", and I worked on the basis that - if we've got nothing in common - then why add them as my "friend"?
Lots of good-looking women wanted to be my friend, which was nice. I'm happily married, and there's nothing on my MySpace profile which I would really expect to get any hearts racing, so I have to conclude that these lovely ladies are in a certain profession I have never had reason to interact with.
So - what does it matter?
On the one hand, I get a few "adds", from geeks and pimps. My PageRank goes up, too - PR3 isn't to be sniffed at.
But, what does it achieve? As per my previous post, it may be that I am now of the older generation, wondering why the youths do what they do.
I'd prefer to see it the other way - that I'm an old fart (that's not exactly open to debate!) who knows how the system works, and - at the end of the day - MySpace matters not a jot, unless you happen to be a teenage girl.
I suspect that the total number of teenage girls subscribing to this blog is something less than zero.
Therefore, let's all direct MySpace to 127.0.0.1
Fri 23rd Mar 2007 @ 00:52 2007: Getting an AmEx Card? Ask for the spy-free version
AmEx tracking users through public spaces via RFID
American Express also promised that it would make a chip-free version of its credit card available to concerned consumers who ask for it.
Tue 20th Mar 2007 @ 17:28 2007: Quote of the Day
ZDNet get the best user comments...
Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?
That sounds preposterous to me.
If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.
Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.
Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.
I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.
You're right, there must be some Windows underneath here.... I'll have another look, it must be in there somewhere :)
Mon 19th Mar 2007 @ 16:37 2007: Ian Murdock joining Sun
Ian Murdock, the "ian" of "Debian", then founder of Progeny, is moving to Sun as Chief Operating Platforms Officer. It sounds as if he'll be working on getting the best out of both Solaris and Linux; usability, stability, features, etc. With OpenSolaris now under the GPL too, where is this all going? It all sounds good to me...
Sun 18th Mar 2007 @ 20:26 2007: F1 Losers League
After the first round in Australia, I'm winning (er, losing) the F1 Losers League!
I'm playing as the Slow Bicycle Race. I'm not too sure that Kubica and Kovalainen will prove to have been good choices, though the closest competition so far has got Kubica as a double-pointer, so somebody else has an even stronger lack of faith in him. (and I'm sure he'd be pleased to know that!).
Indeed, The Chain and Slow Bicycle Race have almost identical lineups - Kubica, Kovalainen and Massa, and the Spyker team (Spyker as a double-pointer, naturally!). In contrast, Chain has Barrichello and Red Bull, whereas I've got Wurz and Honda. This could be a close-run thing...
The tail end of the pack are much more interesting than the front; The middle ground is even more interesting, with very fierce battles for one or two points here and there between quite a few teams. It'd be hard to do a competition for "most mediocre achievement" though.
On the winning end of the grid, congrats in particular to Kimi and new-boy Hamilton.
Wed 14th Mar 2007 @ 21:03 2007: New Firefox plugin for Wishlist
There's a new version of the Firefox plugin for the WishList, WishList 0.4.
The old plugin worked on the basis that you could right-click on a webpage, and add it to your WishList.
The new plugin works on the basis that if you right-click on an image on a webpage, then the webpage gets added to your WishList as before, but the image itself is also pre-loaded into the submission form.
The upshot of which, is that you don't need to bother saving a picture of the thing and then adding it to your WishList.
Sun 11th Mar 2007 @ 00:49 2007: F1 Losers League
Thanks to Tim for pointing out the F1 Losers League.
It's a fiver to join, but if he doesn't get 20 entries (think about it ... 20 x 5 = a hundred notes, just for spotting who's bad at building a car and driving it round a track for a couple of hours) by the end of the week, then it won't happen.
Well, I suspect that the F1 event will still happen. It's just the F1 Losers League which won't happen. I think.
I'm waiting for Bernie Ecclestone to get back to me on that.
If the league doesn't get its minimum entrants, the small print says that "If you have entered but I don't reach my minimum 20 entrants, you will be refunded your entrance fee (with a bit added on for Paypal so you don't lose out)." which I think is particularly generous.
Oh, and whilst I'm at it..... Woohoo, I'm so excited, I can't wait for the season to start. I love my F1, even if I am totally confused about who is driving for which team this year!
Fri 9th Mar 2007 @ 11:02 2007: How to compete with "Free"
There's an interesting and well-written article at techdirt on the argument that "You can't compete with free".
He provides two examples:
- $100m to build a car factory, $20,000 to build a car
- $100m to make a movie, $0 to make copies
In either case, if you sell at $0 margin, you are $100m out of pocket.
This is the way business works; by adding value, you can sell above margin and make a profit, whether the margin is $20,000 or $0. If you can make over $100m, you have offset your fixed costs. If you can't, you go out of business.
Mon 5th Mar 2007 @ 00:13 2007: "What you should know about switching to Ubuntu from Windows"
ArsGeek has a blog post entitled "What you should know about switching to Ubuntu from Windows". Nothing in there is specific to Ubuntu as opposed to any other Linux distro, and the author seems to be a little confused around point #7:
You are going to be more vulnerable to hackers. If you don't consider a malware infestation as being hacked, then Linux/Unix is probably the most hacked OS. Sure there are far less instances of hacking than of malware and virus outbreaks but you'll want to be aware of this. If you have a system with a dedicated IP that's on all the time, you could be a target for hacking. Read up on your linux security. A good firewall is a good idea. Edit - I'd like to update this a bit. I'm no longer sure point 7 is true - certainly you could be the object of intrusions or scans to attempt an intrusion. At this time however ubuntu is just as hardened if not more so than other operating systems. So could you be hacked? Yes. Will you? Your probability isn't any higher than any other OS. However if you modify the base system and open your system to vulnerabilities you may open yourself up to greater risk.
I think that the gist here, is that (ignoring Windows viruses), then non-Windows hacks are the most common. I can't fault logic like that :-)
I believe that a default Ubuntu install has no services running, so externally-initiated attacks are effectively zero (as with Win98, an OS which I personally feel should be gaining more popularity these days, but that's an aside).
Personally, I run two services: ssh (tcp/22) and http (tcp/80). The HTTP side I'm happy enough with; there's very little there, with a sensible Apache2 configuration. ssh is also securely configured, but there are regular automated attacks. I think that I've given it a plug before, but I see DenyHosts as an essential tool for anybody running ssh over the internet. You can configure it as tight or loose as you like. I've got it set so that 3 failed logins cause an email to be sent to me. This specifies what server was abused, and who tried to do it.
So, if you can guess my (DHCP-assigned, whenever I (or my ISP) choose to reassign an IP addy) IP address, and my login ID, and my password (in 3 tries), then you're in.
Sun 4th Mar 2007 @ 00:07 2007: Voice Recognition ... when faced with perl
This seems to have been posted as an anti-Vista thing, particularly at http://chalain.livejournal.com/43015.html, but I'd really see it as an example of "why voice recognition is not a good way to write code".
We're talking 10 minutes of your life here, by the way.
Fri 2nd Mar 2007 @ 23:24 2007: Vista (BBC Review)
Bless 'em, the BBC have reviewed Windows Vista. Well, okay, it's not so much a review as a "well, I tried it on my 4-yr-old laptop and it was painful".
On the one hand: I could have saved you the bother as soon as you said "4-yr-old laptop".
On the other hand: My 8-yr-old laptop runs xubuntu (the cut-down version of the Linux flavour-of-the-month) quite happily, while my 3-yr-old desktop runs Ubuntu with no problems at all.
The only question that needs to be answered: Why do you want/need to upgrade?
Vista has been in the works for a long (long, long) time now, and with WinFS and all the other interesting-sounding stuff dropped, leaving only a sub-MacOSX, sub-Beryl GUI, what possible reason can any sane human being have, for replacing a Windows XP machine with Windows Vista?
There is no USP. Other than "It came with the hardware", why on earth would anybody want this? At least within the next 12 months?
But hey; I only met Windows XP 16 months ago, and I'm still suffering learning the broken paradigms and metaphors every day.
Why doesn't everyone just use simple stuff, like Linux, for the desktop? None of these driver issues, broken apps, unreadable data.
As I've been saying for over a decade now: MS Windows. It'll never catch on.
It's just not up to the task.
Fri 2nd Mar 2007 @ 00:30 2007: I will not ...
I did get away with this, back in 1982ish... IIRC, it was something like this (on a BBC Micro):
READY> 10 FOR I IN 1 TO 100
READY> 20 LPRINT "I will not eat mints in class"
READY> 30 DONE
READY> RUN
Thu 1st Mar 2007 @ 00:05 2007: AJAX/2
Thanks to an excellent post, I've written my very first AJAX script. Actually, it's just AJ, without the AX, hence the title AJAX/2.
index.html and rpc.php make up a total of 56 lines.
Okay, it's not the most elegant thing in the world, but it makes for a decent quick and dirty search engine. Enter the name of your favourite band (or song), click on "Make Link" and the appropriate link is generated. The AJAXy feel comes when you go back to the form and put new details into it. This really is "AJAX 101", though.
Still, it's like http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ on wheels. (oh, I see it's got a new look, too (and a new testimony, I think. Amazing how many Christians you can find around here)).
I suppose that the logical next step would be to allow the user to specify filetypes. And it's more useful than simple articles which tell you what do type in to Google.
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