Fuckers

Read this blurb on the XM lawsuit by the RIAA.

You're Rich Biotch!

I was at a Citibank ATM near 45th and sixth avenue yesterday, and the machine told me it only had $50 bills, and helpfully offered me quantities of money in increments of $50.

I laughed my way to the ATM next to it.

Serial Communications from OS X

I can use screen instead of Zterm or minicom!

ls /dev/tty.*

gives me:

/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem /dev/tty.KeySerial1
/dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync

I then run:

screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1 9600

And I get a serial console to whatever the serial port (in my case a Keyspan serial adapter) is connected to.

I use this to quit screen:

control-A, then control-
This is very very useful...

Thoughts on the Treo 700p

Cy asked me what I thought about the Treo 700p. Coming from the perspective of a GSM Treo 650 user, using the phone on a network (T-Mobile USA) that doesn't officially offer or support it, but does offer excellent voice and data tariffs, here are some of my thoughts:

Note that I haven't played with one yet.

Frankly, I'm a bit jaded with Palm right now. Having used the Treo 650 for the last year, the platform is showing its age.

The OS crashes a lot. The web browser is, to put it mildly, inferior to many browsers from Nokia and you can't run a decent version of Opera on it either.

Hotsyncing contacts and calendars is still a joke (compared to what is available with Blackberries and Windows Mobile based devices when tied to Exchange Server.)

Here's where my Treo has gotten me at this point in my phone expectations:

• 1. Reception Everywhere
  
• 2. QWERTY keyboard.
  
• 3. Long Battery life with continuous background network connectivity.
  
• 4. Always on email. (ChatterEmail does this well.)
  
• 5. Syncing contacts and calendar with computer and beyond (eg Google Calendar), automatically, and over the air, in the background. (You can do this with Palm Desktop or The Missing Sync, but it is SLOW, and a blocking foreground process.)
  
• 6. Camera that works well in low light.
  
• 7. Ability to add mp3 ringtones (works with 3rd party add-on on Treo) and 3rd party software at will to and from my phone, and not through the phone company's wireless network.
  
• 8. For the love of god not crash more than once a day.
  
• 9. Touch Screen Phone Interface(once you start using it... It just works really well.)
  
• 10. Have enough space on the device to not HAVE to have expansion cards to store data.
  
• 11. Run on a user expandable Operating System (linux)
  
• 12. Pre-emptive Multitasking.
  
• 13. External audio silencer button.
  

The GSM Treo 650 handles #1, #2, #4, #6, #7 (without supporting mp3 ringtones... come on), #9and #13.
The CDMA Treo 700p improves on the 650 by adding #10. I bet it will still have problems with #5, #8, and they don't plan on moving to #11 or #12 before next year, and there's still no GSM Treo 700p, so forget #1, as it won't work abroad.

The Blackberry handles #1, #2, #3 (I hear), #4, #5, no mp3 support so no #7, #8, #10.

I still think the 700p will be better than any other phone out there, but only barely, Blackberry is catching up.

And if Apple does come out with a phone someday...

Break of Reality

Break of Reality
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Playing at 59th St/Columbus circle on the uptown Central Park West platform at Rush Hour.

Call Me Crazy

But I've been thinking the same thing this weekend.

There's a certain poetic justice about Gore in 2008.

And given a choice between McCain and Gore, I would vote for Gore.

Frankly, healing the Republican Party just is neither my problem nor my project. And after what will be eight years of this nonsense, I just don't give a damn.

Fwd: [IP] real good SNL: If Al Gore were President

Do watch the clip. I caught it on my DVR earlier today.

Beyond the parody, there is something almost poignantly painful about Al Gore talking about so many of the issues that many of us thought were important back in the 2000 election, that have so ignominiously blown up in our faces during this Bush Administration.

I had almost forgotten how much I miss competent government.

If the Democrats can just remind us of this, I think they have a hell of a chance in the next elections.


Begin forwarded message:

From: David Farber
Date: May 14, 2006 3:28:54 PM EDT
Subject: [IP] real good SNL: If Al Gore were President




Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks
Date: May 14, 2006 1:16:43 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] SNL: If Al Gore were President



Last night, "Saturday Night Live," <http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/> opened their show with Al Gore addressing the nation as if he was the President of the United States. Gore was focused and quite funny in this entertaining spoof of the current administration and their long range of failures. He also parodied himself and the media (when they falsely claimed he said he created the internets) by saying that he invented an Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine.

You can find a Windows Media version here: <http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14-06.wmv>.
You can find a QT version here: <http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14.mov>.

Well worth checking out!

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>