Why I Love The Internet, Part 308,456
…It makes me laugh. An interesting discussion popped up over at Slashdot regarding the lack of female applicants to, and therefore, lack of females being sponsored by the GNOME project’s “Summer of Code” (sponsored by Google). The conversation revolved around the general lack of females in tech fields and spawned the following comment: There’re no [...]
A Virtual Cornucopia Of Cool Software
Google has been on a “pro-Doug” tear recently as far as I can see, releasing first Picasa, then Google Earth for Linux, along with the cool-in-concept Google Browser Sync plugin for Firefox. The Google Sync extension only ranks cool in concept because, well, in order for it to work to its capacity, you have to [...]
Network Gremlins
I don’t know if it’s a universal I.T. thing or not, but at my place of employment we sysadmins have taken to blaming any freak accident/unexplainable computer phenomenon/Series of Unfortunate Events on “gremlins”. A person couldn’t log on five minutes ago and all of a sudden, they can? Gremlins. USB sticks now mounting when, previously, [...]
Site News And Updates
I’ve made a few changes around here lately and thought it might be worth pointing out the (fairly subtle) modifications. First up is the Rolling Archives visible at the bottom of the main blog page, originally conceived of by Michael Heilman and then nicely WordPress plugin-ized by Zeo, meaning that it was dead easy to [...]
Bill Gates: Apple’s Best Pitchman
Heh. Looks like Microsoft’s continuing troubles with security patches may be bearing fruit for Apple and Linux distributors (in the satire market, at least). Scrappleface: Microsoft Extends Apple Sales Promotion to Jan. 10. (2006-01-05) — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it would extend, until January 10, its program to promote the sales of rival Apple [...]
Your UNIX Geekout Moment Of The Day
If you have even a passing interest in the history of operating systems, then you owe yourself a look at the comprehensive timeline of UNIX’s existence.
Dang. Just try to follow some of those OS family trees…
(0) #This Just Gets Better And Better
Ahhhh, Sony BMG, how we love to hate thee! Not only have you been caught installing unauthorized rootkits on your customers’ PCs, but it’s been found that you’re illegally using LGPL’d software to do so.
Tsk tsk. What’s the Japanese word for schadenfreude, anyways?
Anti-Competitive Update #1: Via Fark, we find out that Sony BMG is also leading a price-fixing cartel intent on driving online music prices up. For shame.
Anti-Competitive Update #2: Update #1 corrected to note that this in regards to all online sales, at least in the consumer electronics realm, thus it is Sony in its entirety and not simply its BMG music division that is involved in this scheme. In the U.K.. As far as I can tell.
(5) #Mmmmmm, Alpo!
Microsoft trusts its own technology, as any user of MS products will readily attest to. The compilers they release to the general public are feature-filled and rarely compromised by bugs of staggering size and scope. They are also unequivocal in their disdain for Linux, thus it comes as no surprise that the new wireless LAN [...]
Everyone Give Slashdot A Round Of Applause As They Join Us In The “Noughties”
Slashdot: finally moving to CSS-based layout, and not a momentfive years too late. Heh. Maybe it’ll finally render correctly in Firefox, for a change.
Eeeenteresting…
As previously noted in this space, the Google Mini isn’t exactly a model of openness. I’d always assumed that it ran a version of Linux as its operating system, but was never quite sure. That is, until today. Google issued a security alert and a subsequent patch to address XSS vulnerabilities. As I followed the [...]
