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http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/

Dvorak has always been a fairly clueless commentator, but lately he seems to have been exceeding his previous best efforts. This is in line with his recent 'misses the point entirely' would-be hatchet-job on Creative Commons.

Dvorak is too old an industry hand not to know how things work. Quite aside from whatever Apple's doing behind the scenes to encourage people to write about them (or encourage editors to demand stories on Apple), there's the fact that Apple is currently The Story. They've turned their business and their stock price around, they have a charismatic leader (Jobs) and a charismatic product (iPod), and they're aggressively rolling out new products which can be expected to sell well. Whether you want to write an "It can't last" or a "Apple is unstoppable" story, there's lots of material for even the laziest journo to work with. Whereas most journalists realize that writing a "Vista still isn't close to being ready, but it'll be really wonderful when it is." story looks a little ridiculous. ("Still not king.")

It's worth remembering that not so long ago, Apple was getting a lot of coverage and none of it was good. I've always wondered how much of the Apple crisis of the '90s that nearly sunk the company before His Steveness came riding to the rescue was actually caused by the negative coverage they got, and how much of that negative coverage was 'encouraged' by certain interested parties (no names, no pack drill). If I'm right that a certain amount of that coverage was the product of someone whispering in the shell-like ears of the industry editors that they might like to run a few more "Apple is doomed" stories, then presumably those same someones will be back when Vista is good and ready, and we'll see nothing but "Microsoft triumphant" and "Vista changes the future of humanity" stories for six solid months.

Coverage has everything to do with what the editors decide is The Story this week. It has nothing to do with today's journalists being Apple-centric because (unlike John "Manly Man" Dvorak) they're too wimpish to go mano-a-mano with a balky Windows box and don't know what real computing is. Nice try, John, but you're still talking rubbish.

To quote the shirt, "I HATE Jack Thompson" as much as anyone, but keep in mind that an investigation alone won't get him disbarred. I'd love to have that kind of P.R. weapon on the side of the games industry, but premature gloating isn't going to win any hearts on the Florida bar. In fact, it may have the opposite effect.

A better strategy would be to send correspondence to the bar alerting them to other infractions Jack has made besides those against Penny Arcade. For instance, his use of these same tactics on Lou Kerner of Bolt Media is my personal favorite.

Or you could cite his threats against the author of VGCats.

Or even the latest vague legal threats against Dave Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family.

One of these can be overlooked, but if the Bar knows about all of these, perhaps Jack will be out of the game for good.

Keyboards are quaint. So how could Scotty type really fast on a Qwerty keyboard?

I oppose this law on other grounds.

But I have to ask -- if the state is "not providing anything in exchange" for your tax money, why do you live there? Why not just move to Congo, large parts of which have no functioning government?

Here is a link to the blog entry the article mentions that contains the code of the worm. (From Evan Martin of Google)

Here is a recent paper on XSS viruses. Also there is an analysis of the specific MySpace worm.

Evidently LiveJournal and other sites take care to scrub out JavaScript in user-provided web pages, but the rumors are that sometimes people do figure out how to obfuscate their HTML enough to deliver the payload, despite the scrubbers.

Well, I happen to sound boring / braindead here. I could link that, but it probably sounds pretentious, so I lose.

While I agree that a government is not equal to a role model, saying that the OpenDocument standard is virtually ignored by the constituents of Massachusetts is ill-informed. Many of the individual communities in Massachusetts made the switch in advance of the Commonwealth itself; Saugus is probably the best example as it probably made the switch first and has a lot of info online:

• Saugus' official take on the change
• The take on the Saugus blog

There's more info buried within the various Saugus sites, too. This isn't a change decreed from on-high, it's got quite a bit of grassroots support as well.

Funny this comes up. My attention was draw to this earlier this evening. Talk about adaptations... :>

I do know there are at least several developers at MySQL AB who are intimately familiar with the InnoDB code, but I don't know if there are enough to fork the code and continue its development in the same vein as before. Frankly I will be surprised if this doesn't slow down 5.x development at least a little, while MySQL AB shuffles people around to get them up to speed.

Personally, I keep a blog over at Live Journal (link here) But I will never understand how people make 400k a year off of their blogs. I write about mostly everything on my blog but advertising? Never thought of it. Now that AOHell sees it as a potential way to make money they are buying up all the blog sites! Keep LJ Free! Hehe.

You will know that the article is not completely up to date. Currently, Bush officials have denied that they asked Jack Thompson to write up video game legislation for them. Actually, blame should be put on GameStop for not researching this subject further, which is sad being that it is a highly visted videogame information site for many gamers.

According to this, Thompson is somewhat full of shit.

"A representative of Jeb Bush's press office characterized as "untrue" yesterday's Jack Thompson press release in which the Miami attorney and self-described "anti-game crusader" claimed that he was crafting video game legislation on behalf of the Florida governor."

More through the link.

The Singularity is not about technical progress; that's an enabling factor and a side effect. Everyone saying 'it won't make any difference; human nature will be the same' is missing the point; the whole driving force behind the Singularity concept is that soon 'human nature' in general, and human intelligence in particular, may no longer be fixed and unchanging. To be fair, Kurzweil uses completely the wrong emphasis in TSIN and encourages this misunderstanding, simply because it's easier to write about and sells more books.

Here's my attempt to describe the actual basis of the 'Singularity' concept, and I'd very strongly recommend this as a serious introduction.

... but the guitarist just graduated from the University of Washington's Computer Science program. Perhaps this partially explains why they tried this experiment, mentioned their encoding settings on the download page, etc.

They performed (along with The Presidents of the United States of America) at the UW this week as part of a "welcome back" concert (pictures here... ironically enough, it was partially sponsored by Dell and Napster), and it wasn't until they played "Flagpole Sitta" that many people realized who they actually were. Most people claim they don't know them or "Flagpole Sitta," but I'm sure they'd recognize it if they heard it. That's not to say that's their only good song, though -- their entire set rocked.

The funniest comic I have read in a long time:

Goodbye, foom

And then there are some other funny ones:

Niego
Joe and Monkey
Ugly Hill

I just saw this stuff when cruising toothpastefordinner's latest livejournal image page--

http://www.livejournal.com/users/matthewlovesyou/

I can't quite tell if this guy's serious. But that's why it's funny.

I saw a spectacularly-detailed Katamari cake, complete with sculpted Prince recently on the LiveJournal Katamari Damacy group. The amount of fan art/cosplay/crafts for Katamari Damacy is amazing.

Considering that you may be moving into a region that has NO ability to provide amenities, you may want to treat the whole experience like a wilderness backpacking trip. However, if you're going to stay in one place where you can keep supplies, you should prepare a disaster stockpile. A these items are what you should have on hand at home - and presumably take with you at large. ( List compiled by my pal Breakpoint, shortly after his fifth Burning Man trip )

Yes, this is a dupe... As for Avalanche in case you haven't been following up on this:

- Microsoft Wants P2P Avalanche to Crush BitTorrent
- Bram Cohen's Response to Microsoft's Avalanche
- Bram Cohen of BitTorrent about Avalanche

In other words, make sure you're not working for Electronic Arts? (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/) :-)

Look at Six Apart's next-generation blogging tool, Project Comet. It emphasizes not only sharing, but also ways to limit access to a small group.

According to this guy: "In this space our tree hath bloomed, (made) fruitful by the fruit-trees of unknown Elysium, in which place the select play, having been from the beginning surrounded by angels."

I found this online which claims to be a better translation than IGN's.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/edg/520709.html

It's still pretty verbose and awkward. Maybe if I were on pins and needles waiting for this thing I'd be trying to hack the website like all of you.

Retailers must have already known if the release date was in 12 hours. Was it kept a big secret? I can't believe that.

Well now you stand corrected :)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/opportunitygrrl/

A while ago: http://www.livejournal.com/users/alamar/21818.html It's in Russian thought, you'll need to babelfish it to actually read. Feeling like Cassandra.

Anyway, if you figure out how to get listings working, can you drop a comment in my livejournal- just leave a comment on any entry i made. (http://livejournal.com/users/fgrump123).

about my internet'tv situation:
I'm a UCR (riverside) student and I live in a student housing complex. My services are provided by ygnition (ygniton.com). When I moved in, they only said to plug into the walljack, phone service would be turned on in a day or 2 and tv should be working. No NAT or proxies.

Been here for a week, the complex is supposed to house 500 students, but right now there are only about 100-150 people. So bandwidth is pleanty and life is good (other than having to live on a construction site for the past week, but the work crews are gone now).

I hope CCI is this good to you!

Now it's just a matter of waiting for classes to start on wed.

Grump

They [many of the Linux distributors] have realized that it takes more than open-source; it takes open-standards to make a successful open operating system.

That's why the LSB (Linux Standard Base) 3.0 release is so important.

They [many of the Linux distributors] have realized that it takes more than open-source; it takes open-standards to make a successful open operating system.

That's why the LSB (Linux Standard Base) 3.0 release is so important.

Check the story from a couple days ago:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19/ 1128201&tid=156&tid=163&tid=8&tid=106

Basically, Ulrich Drepper, maintainer of glibc was complaining about how the LSB certification is broken because it's tests are poorly coded and introduce race conditions when ran on fast (read: maybe 700Mhz+ processors) SMP machines.

Here's a direct link to the article:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/udrepper/8511.htm l

Despite the original post, it wasn't Debian who pledged to conform to this standard, but the Debian Common Core Alliance.

Nor Debian nor Ubuntu are part of it.

Btw, in a recent post on his blog, Red Hat's Ulrich Drepper makes some criticisms of the LSB and its shortcomings of the v3 certification process.

Could you tell me exactly how you think our right to freedom of religion is eroding? And who you would cast as the "villian" in this issue and perhaps why you think they are doing what they are doing? I would point the Evangelical Christian movement as the villian in this issue, because they seek to make *everything* faith-based. Live in Kansas? Don't expect your child to be taught evolution. Live in Texas? Don't expect your child to be taught Geology, Evolution, OR SAFE SEX!

I realize that flies directly in the face of what you thought I was saying in my other comments that you flew right on by. But that's ok... I believe our children's minds are formulated and mostly influenced 12 years old and up. And here is where we see the clashes of values, conservatism vs. liberalism, etc etc etc. NOT in grammer school. There is no liberal Math. Well, there wasn't when I was a kid... turns out I guess there is now. But of course, I use this as the most glaring example.

I consider myself to be a Pagan, an earth-worshiper if you will. I do not believe in God or the Devil as any of the Judeo-Christian sects would have you believe in. I could never believe in a God that would willingly strike down every soul on Earth, a city, or even just cuz. I do not believe in an eternal hell, except for those we make for ourselves. But, I am not free to gather and practice that religion without massive protest, argument, and upheaval. So I don't. For example: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jhohanna/53413.ht ml (yes, it's from my blog, but it's the text of the article no longer found on gazette.com). I have fought for a decade for us who are not Christian to have a voice. Yet we have none.

Add to all of this, all of President Bush's agendas and ideas and funding all have something faith-based attached to them. I think that's wrong. I don't think that one 50c3 should get more funding because they happen to be a Christian organization. I don't believe that Muslim organizations should get passed over for the same funding because they are Muslim (this occurs all the time). I believe in equality of all... not of some.

But all too unfortunately, it becomes an issue of money and power. Who's got it, who wants it, and what do they want to do with it? It's like the 80s all over again. The Southern Christian Baptist Convention is the biggest congregation in the country. They are also the biggest lobbying firm. Hrmph.

And yet, despite all of this, yes, I am still a Republican. Because my faith does not guide my politics. My head does. Maybe a little bit of my heart. And what is now will not always be. Tomorrow is a brighter day... and the current Administration can only hold for 3 more years. *sigh*. Jho

The testing process was to run a test, and when it failed, try to figure out if the problem was in the test suite or the tested code. Simple enough.

The tests certainly at some point worked.

No. That wasn't the case. I found myself fixing obvious bugs in the test suite, then attempting to use the fixed version against the target. It was often clear that the test suite could never have worked.

Some distributions still somehow manage to pass the test suits of a new version of the spec. And all this without the people reporting any problems and requesting waiving the test.

We'd report the bugs, with suggested fixes, but we could not wait for fixes to come back and retest. We had to plow forward. We claimed compliance when we had a test we thought tested the assertions and passed it. We never asked for a waiver. Another nice things we came across during the LSBv3 testing are numerous timing problems.

Been there. Done that, though I didn't have to find some slow machine. What is the value of such a certification? What assurance does this give you? Is don't use fast SMP machines an acceptable answer in any universe, especially when it comes to thread tests?

If you have need of slow machines, I can provide approximately 25 working 486/33's. I'd put this on his blog, but he doesn't allow comments. I thought this was strange, because I use livejournal primarily as a place where people can comment. However, he talks about his choice there, too. To each their own.

It is not possible to achieve the goal of 100% binary compatibility...

All good points. And its worse than that. Yet, the exercise was valuable. For us, it uncovered many bugs in SVr3. Many. This was ultimately a good thing for our customers.

We were also a Unix porting house. We fixed lots of bugs in our prior ports of Unix. We offered our fixes to AT&T for free. They declined. We had to apply our fixes to each port - without the benefit of CVS. And, we had thousands of patches. And all this for a basically stable system. It was around then that I was convinced of the incredible inefficiency of propietary software. This would never happen to gcc.

My advise: but the losses.

I read this as "My advice, cut the losses." Oddly, many versions of this mispelling pass my spell checker. Ulrich needs an editor. Perhaps I'll volunteer. Perhaps he can check my work. Will you be a swap editor for me? I'll check your work, you check mine.

So, i agree that the test suite was a horrible idea from the idea that one might assure customers that their old software will still run, or will run on compatible platforms. I agree that the last bug will not be found. However, that is not an excuse to give up the search.

The hypocrisy of the Burning Man organization really pisses me off.

Last year, rzr_grl registered as a pro photographer, and so she got the press kit, which was possibly the most hypocritical thing I've ever read. Basically, the Burning Man Organization's attitude is, "if you take a photo on the playa, we own it, and get to tell you when and where and how it can be published. Even if you take that photo of yourself, inside your tent, surrounded by your own stuff."

Update: rzr_grl pointed out that I forgot the best part: they also demand a percentage of profit (10% or 20%) plus that you send them a copy of all photos, for them to use however they like.

Which is not, in itself, necessarily a bad thing -- that's just a matter of contract. You buy the ticket, you camp on the land they rented, you submit to their rules, and their rules consist of a Disney-like protection of their brand. They try to protect the image of "Burning Man" in as structured and proprietary a way as Disney protects the mouse: you can be sure that Disney demands the same kind of submission the part of any press who take photos inside Disneyland.

But the thing that really pisses me off is that they do all this -- they lay out this completely one-sided you-work-for-us lawyerly document -- and they fill the whole thing with an incredible amount of pomo hippie noise, in a sad attempt to disguise what they're actually saying! They go on at length about how they are viciously protecting their brand for your own good. And every other paragraph says stuff like "Larry Harvey -- dare we say it -- a Genius..."

They're taking a totally standard, normal, corporate line toward their theme park -- but that idea embarrasses them, and would offend their clientele, so they cloak it up in bullshit and hope that everyone reading it will buy the lie that it's really some spontaneous group-hug, and not a theme park. (Try to listen to them explain why it's ok for them to charge money in center camp, but it's not ok for anyone else to do it without your brain melting with the incredulousness of it.)

She really needs to find that press packet and type it in, it will make each and every one of you vomit, I promise.

Now, you might say that the motivations are different, and that makes the intentional obfuscation ok, but A: it doesn't, and B: I don't think the motivations are different at all.

Disney protects the mouse because the mouse's image is their whole business, and any change in how the mouse is viewed by the public could effect their ability to do their thing.

Burning Man is no different. Disney protects their brand because if someone else exploited their park in a way they didn't like, it would no longer be projecting the image they want, and the park would no longer be profitable (or, "full of happy little kids" if you prefer to look at it that way.)

I don't have any problem with that. What I have a problem with is the hypocrisy: Disney is at least honest about what they are doing and why. The Burning Man people went through such amazing verbal and mental gymnastics to avoid using the word "brand" it was comical.

I've enjoyed Burning Man every time I've gone, but after reading that document, I'll be damned if they're getting another dime from me. Which is a major contributing factor to why I'm not going this year: I'd feel dirty giving them my money, and sneaking in sounds like just too much effort (given that I have little tolerance for roughing it.)

I think someone should do Capitalism Camp: the theme of the camp will be to trade US Currency for Goods and Services. If anyone complains, tell them, "Dude, radical self-indulgence! Stop harshing my mellow!"

Now, I am not complaining that Burning Man is about money and shouldn't be. I've got no problem with money.

I think it would be cool if th

The hypocrisy of the Burning Man organization really pisses me off.

Last year, rzr_grl registered as a pro photographer, and so she got the press kit, which was possibly the most hypocritical thing I've ever read. Basically, the Burning Man Organization's attitude is, "if you take a photo on the playa, we own it, and get to tell you when and where and how it can be published. Even if you take that photo of yourself, inside your tent, surrounded by your own stuff."

Update: rzr_grl pointed out that I forgot the best part: they also demand a percentage of profit (10% or 20%) plus that you send them a copy of all photos, for them to use however they like.

Which is not, in itself, necessarily a bad thing -- that's just a matter of contract. You buy the ticket, you camp on the land they rented, you submit to their rules, and their rules consist of a Disney-like protection of their brand. They try to protect the image of "Burning Man" in as structured and proprietary a way as Disney protects the mouse: you can be sure that Disney demands the same kind of submission the part of any press who take photos inside Disneyland.

But the thing that really pisses me off is that they do all this -- they lay out this completely one-sided you-work-for-us lawyerly document -- and they fill the whole thing with an incredible amount of pomo hippie noise, in a sad attempt to disguise what they're actually saying! They go on at length about how they are viciously protecting their brand for your own good. And every other paragraph says stuff like "Larry Harvey -- dare we say it -- a Genius..."

They're taking a totally standard, normal, corporate line toward their theme park -- but that idea embarrasses them, and would offend their clientele, so they cloak it up in bullshit and hope that everyone reading it will buy the lie that it's really some spontaneous group-hug, and not a theme park. (Try to listen to them explain why it's ok for them to charge money in center camp, but it's not ok for anyone else to do it without your brain melting with the incredulousness of it.)

She really needs to find that press packet and type it in, it will make each and every one of you vomit, I promise.

Now, you might say that the motivations are different, and that makes the intentional obfuscation ok, but A: it doesn't, and B: I don't think the motivations are different at all.

Disney protects the mouse because the mouse's image is their whole business, and any change in how the mouse is viewed by the public could effect their ability to do their thing.

Burning Man is no different. Disney protects their brand because if someone else exploited their park in a way they didn't like, it would no longer be projecting the image they want, and the park would no longer be profitable (or, "full of happy little kids" if you prefer to look at it that way.)

I don't have any problem with that. What I have a problem with is the hypocrisy: Disney is at least honest about what they are doing and why. The Burning Man people went through such amazing verbal and mental gymnastics to avoid using the word "brand" it was comical.

I've enjoyed Burning Man every time I've gone, but after reading that document, I'll be damned if they're getting another dime from me. Which is a major contributing factor to why I'm not going this year: I'd feel dirty giving them my money, and sneaking in sounds like just too much effort (given that I have little tolerance for roughing it.)

I think someone should do Capitalism Camp: the theme of the camp will be to trade US Currency for Goods and Services. If anyone complains, tell them, "Dude, radical self-indulgence! Stop harshing my mellow!"

Now, I am not complaining that Burning Man is about money and shouldn't be. I've got no problem with money.

I think it would be cool if th

What you describe is exactly how bittorrent currently works, so apparently that year of studying was pretty much wasted. If you knew anything about Bram, you'd know that game theory is one of his abiding interests. Try reading his blog, it can be pretty interesting.

They threatened to sue me... http://www.livejournal.com/users/gthing/78721.html

You sound like the douchebag subject of this story: http://www.livejournal.com/users/toranonekochan/36 699.html

Ultima Linux, my distribution, is a very customized little Slackware-based distribution designed for both desktop and server functionality. Very good reviews, too.

I was joking. Unfortunately, others are not.

Available here too: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jace/385188.html

The name Netscape has been all but pissed on by AOL. Early 2004 they branded a low cost ISP as Netscape, prompting a former Netscaper-er to comment "AOL makes me want to cry" in JWZs blog.

I suppose there are still some grandmothers out there who think Netscape==Internet, but no one important.

see: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/268332.html

Let's say that I think I'm scientifically literate. Let's also say that I think that I can write. Further, let's say that my local paper doesn't have a science section. Clearly, I should contact my paper and get hired for a weekly column.

One thing that has irked me over the years is that even papers with really good science reporters still end up using utterly awful AP articles. Since these things were written for the entire nation, shouldn't a little care be taken to get it right?

I searched to confirm, and on page 2 there's already a Live Journal entry confirming it: "Where OMGWTFBBQLOL gives you 41 relevent results, and most of them are from livejournal :p" http://www.livejournal.com/users/waywardpixie/1543 72.html ALL OF THIS KNOWLEDGE AT MY FINGER TIPS!

The scheduling seems to be fitting for a desktop OS. BeOS can run servers, but not as well as Linux (hence the reason several BeOS sites eventually switched to Linux servers). For media it's amazing. Gaming seems to work pretty well (Quake 2 for BeOS normally doesn't use hardware acceleration, which until recently was unavailable, and still works fine). And BeOS is know for how responsive its GUI is. The system boots quickly and most applications start quickly (ported software usually takes much longer). Firefox (javascript specifically) even seems to run quite a bit faster under BeOS on dual boot machines (but it's probably just a testament to the programming skills of the BeZilla people). It seems to me that BeOS does better with that stuff because it's designed to be a desktop OS and not a server, so its scheduler is probably a little more fine tuned for that role.

Massachusetts has been going down this road a long time; it's not just something that appeared out of nowhere and they've already done some work weighing the various options. I don't think MS is going to be able to change things with FUD this late in the game.

It's worth noting that parts of Massachusetts have already changed over. Saugus started going this route some years ago; you can see Saugus' official response to the state's announcement or my entry in the Saugus blog discussing the same.

Saugus has been pushing free and open software since the mid to late '90s. Massachusetts developed an "open source trough" for use by all state departments a couple of years back. Switching to open formats is just a natural step along the path that Massachusetts has been heading for quite some time now.

Has anyone else been keeping up on the disaster through The Interdictor?

http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

Well, as one who manages the family computer, which runs WinXP, AutoUpdate is actually pretty useful. I haven't had to install an update manually for quite some time.

Seriously though, I can't wait until we get an OSX port that doesn't suck (Camino is okay, but what good is it if you can't use all the cool firefox extensions?).

Well, as a Mac OS X user, I feel your pain. But, I'm wondering which parts suck for you? I have issues with page rendering. Look at these rendering jobs from the LiveJournal home page (be kind! this is hosted on my personal server box):

• FireFox 1.0 (Sorry, but the "About" Dialogue blocks the effected text, so you'll have to trust me)
• FireFox 1.5 Deer Park Beta 1 the distributed Mac OS X binary, not compiled from soruce
• Camino 0.92 just for comparson
• Opera 8.02 for Mac OS X
• Safari 2 (And if you don't trust me, think about how many web browsers have a brushed metal GUI like that)

Any one else have this problem? I know it's not too isolated since I've had this happen on both installations of OS X 10.4 and even 10.3. Or are there other problems that I don't know about?

What do think they're going to be using? Their cell phones? Their land lines? The mail?

Considering that hundreds of thousands of people from the affeced areas are now outside of Katrina's path of destruction, I'd guess that many of them have access to all of the normal channels of communication in today society. Some people even have internet access in downtown New Orleans.