Mozilla donates to OpenBSD

It is good to see the Open Source ecosystem taking care of its own.

Donations Update: "Frank Hecker
from the
Mozilla Foundation
contacted Theo to inform him that the foundation decided to donate $10,000 USD to the OpenSSH project. Frank mentioned this today in the Mozilla Foundation's
status report.

The OpenSSH project truly appreciates this gesture of solidarity from such a
respectable open source project.

Besides this sizeable donation we also received hundreds of smaller donations,
mostly from
individuals and small companies. Thanks everyone for stepping up
to keep OpenBSD/OpenSSH ticking."

(Purportedly Via OpenBSD Journal.)

The Death of the Bahamas Tourism Industry

Buh Bye!

"The [Bahamian government Plays and Films Control ] board chose to ban it [Brokeback Mountain] because it shows extreme homosexuality, nudity and profanity, and we feel that it has no value for the Bahamian public," Chavasse Turnquest-Liriano, liaison officer for the control board, said Wednesday.

a. The Bahamas has a Plays and Films Control board.

b. They are afraid of extreme homosexuality. I shudder to think what the heterosexual analogue to that would entail.

Another Apple II Lab Bites the Dust

Does it make me old to fondly remember using a logo program on the Apple II?

Holy shit, there's a version for OS X!

Purportedly Via Cult of Mac:

Another Apple II Lab Bites the Dust: "
Vance Carruth, a third grade teacher from Huntington Beach, California, is retiring -- and his clutch of twenty Apple IIe systems will be going with him, the Mac Mothership website reports.

Even though the technology is almost thirty (30) years old, Vance's third graders fight over the chance to get use of one of these puppies.

... the school system purchased Apple IIe's for each classroom back in the 80's. In the early 90's they were replaced by IBM compatibles and most recently by Dell's. Each of the teachers were told they could take their Apple IIe home or move them to a designated storage room. Most elected to not take them home. The storage room later became Mr. Vance's classroom and he inherited the equipment. Mr. Vance decided to setup and network the desktops and has been supporting this effort with other machines that he has salvaged parts from for the last fifteen (15) years.

Now the real bad news. Mr. Carruth, (AKA Mr. Vance - Student's nickname for him) will be retiring this coming June. This comes only after 39 years of service at the same school. Once Mr. Vance has gone, there will be no other teacher to take on this support effort and the Apple IIe legacy along with Mr. Vance will vanish from Smith School.

"

Falling Behind Nippon (Again)

And all this despite large content owners like Sony calling Japan home.

Purportedly Via Lessig Blog:

Lost in regulation: "

In the late 1990s, I travelled a bunch to South America to talk about cyberspace. In conference after conference, I listened to South Americans describe how they were waiting for the government to enact rules so they could begin to develop business in cyberspace. That reaction puzzled me, an American. As I explained to those who would listen, in America, business wasn't waiting for the government to 'clarify' rules. It was simply building business in cyberspace without any support from government.

Yet as I listened to the Japanese describe the stuff they were doing with content in cyberspace, I realized we (America) had become South America. One presentation in particular described an extraordinary database the NII had constructed to discover relevance in linked databases, and drive traffic across a database of texts. I was astonished by the demonstration, and thought to myself that we could never build something like this in the U.S., at least until cases like the Google Book Search case was resolved.

And bingo ‒ the moment of recognition. We are now, as the South Americans in the 1990s, waiting for the government to clarify the rules. Investment is too uncertain; the liability too unclear. We thus wait, and fall further behind nations such as Japan, where the IP (as in copyright) bar is not so keen to stifle IP (as in the goose that ...).

(Oh, and re broadband: NTT is now well on its way to rolling fiber to the home. Cost per home -- between $30-50/m, for 100 megabits/s).

"

LOTR & Army of Darkness

Has anybody else noticed the similarity between certain scenes?

Or is it a given that any scene involving the secret knowledge of gunpowder will have one person (say Ash) keeping the idiot with the flame away from the combustibles...

He Man Does 4 Non Blondes

Jon alerts me to this brilliance.

Watch the video...

Bringing it all together

This is why I love Wil Wheaton. He puts this snarky mirror to the last two decades in the same way that Neal Stephenson does for the future, while still capturing the essence of the spoken word poetry that we would occasionally gather for at the Half Ass.

And by the way Charlie, I'm not sure how I can ever thank you for introducing me to Battelstar Galactica.

climb so high and gain so low:

My Road is paved with d20s and TRON DVDs and Atari 2600 games. It's lit by the glow of TNG and BSG episodes and the soundtrack is by Vangelis. It's patrolled by Rover and they sell Soylent Green in the rest stop vending machines. The speed limit is 42, but if you flash your Bavarian Illuminati card, you can use the FTL drive to make it to Milliways in time for dinner.

(Purportedly Via WIL WHEATON DOT NET: Where is my mind?.)

Boys Who Like Macs Who Also Use PCs

Windows on Mac
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Yes, that is the installation of XP on a Mac. By a quirk of the installation process, that installation screen is at the native resolution of the MacBook Pro, as opposed to the windows standard 640x480. Which Means that Windows Works Better On a Mac.

This doesn't mean I'm switching to XP, it's just nice to have options to get my work done.

Pho

Allen was apalled at my attempt to hijack the symbolism of Boromir's death scene for my gluttony.

FreeiPods.com Sold Private Data -- Despite Promising Not To

Thus proving once again that "there is no such thing as a free ipod lunch."

FreeiPods.com Sold Private Data -- Despite Promising Not To: "

FreeiPods.com, the wildly popular marketing scheme that offers free iPods for trying out various subscription offers, sold the data it gathered on 7.2 million Americans to an email advertising firm, according to a story at Wired News by my colleague Ryan Singel.

(New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer) announced Monday that e-mail marketing giant Datran Media had agreed to a $1.1 million fine for knowingly buying marketing lists from companies with privacy policies that promised not to sell or transfer the lists to a third party.

... Datran's biggest purchase, according to the text of the settlement (.pdf), was a list of 7.2 million Americans' names, e-mail addresses, home phone numbers and street addresses from Gratis Internet, a company best known for promising free iPods, televisions and DVDs to users willing to sign up for promotions offered by partners such as Citibank, Blockbuster and BMG's music club.

The sites inspired dozens of 'Is there really such a thing as a free iPod?' stories in the press (including one by Wired News), and internet forums were packed with pleas for information on how to acquire a free version of Apple Computer's signature fetish item. The freebie required a registrant to sign up five others into the program, and eventually the legalized pyramid scheme reached its inevitable saturation point.

While many did indeed get a free iPod, all ended up with inboxes full of marketing pitches, which began showing up within hours of registering.

Gratis lied to me for the story I wrote originally about the company (also linked above), which did wonders for their early credibility, and then lied again for a follow-up story I wrote about it's privacy practices that was prompted by the avalanche of spam its customers mysteriously received.

In addition, Gratis Internet was a member of Truste, which provides a 'privacy seal' to companies it says have a trusted privacy policy.

When asked by Wired News in 2004 how third-party spammers got hold of Gratis members' e-mail addresses, Truste said it could not find a problem with Gratis' practices.

'The results of our investigation indicate that Gratis Internet did not violate their privacy policy,' Truste investigator Alexander Yap wrote in an October 2004 e-mail. 'Truste did, however, work with them to strengthen and clarify their privacy statement.'

Several months later, Truste revoked Gratis' seal of approval, then quickly reinstated it, then pulled it again, but declined to state publicly its reasons.

In the wake of this week's settlement, Truste's spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls, and executive director Fran Maier did not respond to e-mailed questions about why Truste never discovered the alleged sale or informed the public that Gratis was not adhering to its privacy policy.

"

(Purportedly Via Cult of Mac.)

Windows XP on Intel iMac: confirmed

How to do it.

This is what I'm doing later tonight.

Windows XP on Intel iMac: confirmed: "One Mac user is over US$13,000 richer, as his solution for booting Windows XP on Intel Macs is verified. Are you ready to dual-boot Windows XP and Mac OS X natively on the same machine?

"

(Purportedly Via Ars Technica.)

pstdelta 060315 (Default branch)

I can't believe somebody didn't implement this before. Having a large number of Outlook users on your network backing up (or storing) PST files on the server makes differential backups a complete nightmare.

pstdelta 060315 (Default branch): "Pstdelta can be used to store the differences
between an old and new version of an Outlook .pst
file. It can then generate the new file using just
the old file and the output generated by pstdelta.
It was created in order to vastly reduce the size
of differential backups of .pst files.

---

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

---

Changes:

This release fixes a bug that caused verification failure in specific situations. It adds a nightly script to help facilitate the use of pstdelta in differential backups.

"

(Purportedly Via freshmeat.net.)

This Poor Excuse for a Winter

Coats and T-Shirts coexist on the street, cats and dogs lying together...

Friends, this doesn't look good..

XP booted From the internal drive of an Intel Mac

Dual Boot XP Any Day Now...

XP booted From the internal drive: "

narf2006 posted a photo:

The installed XP after booting from the internal drive. Still one more reboot to go before getting to the desktop.

"

(Purportedly Via narf2006's Photos.)

The Bronx Sudetenland

Marble Hill, the only part of the borough of Manhattan now connected to the bronx.

Trivia Subquestion: What is the northernmost subway stop in Manhattan?

Everybody Lies

What's more disturbing than dreaming about hanging out with television doctor Gregory House, and managing to find snarky situations to quote his lines back to him?




Finding out he's actually a pretty decent guy...

unsurprising surprises

You'd think I'd know by now that when a girl says "Guess what?" to you that "I'm getting hitched" is a likely candidate...

:-D

Laura, furrowed brow

hunter ski trip13.JPG
Originally uploaded by jeanabaena.

I think this is my favorite Laura picture so far.

Mac Book Pro Day 3

I finally have 1.5Gb of RAM on the machine, up from the standard 512Mb, which just wasn't enough.

The stripped screw over the ram compartment that was keeping me from adding ram (due to a right shitful screwdriver from Radio Shack) has been fixed by the quite resourceful people at Digital Society this afternoon.

I'm now sitting at Starbucks on 8th St just west of University Pl, with Belle & Sebastian on the store speakers, and internet through T-Mobile's free weekend hotspot service for T-Mobile customers, and a large cup of Hot Chocolate at my side.

The machine flies.

Full Speed i386 virtualized performance is only days away, and I do look forward to running windows side by side with OS X.

The machine flies.

Also, I just saw a man walking down Broadway with a cat on his hat, speaking loudly (I assume) to his cat, which was sitting quite serenely and taking in the sights.

The season finale of Battlestar Galactica is next Friday, and Jon Stewart takes the stage tomorrow night.

This is a bad time to be a television hater.

On Apple's New Products today

As seen commented elsewhere:

"$350 for a speaker? Who the hell spends $350 on a speaker? Now if they threw in an iPod..."