Wow. Only Jan 6th and we've had 4 wired articles posted to the frontpage this year already. Did they give the slashdot eds subscriptions for xmas or something?
The only story that hasn't been linked is the fake "Suck My Tiny Yellow Balls" story everyone else is running. See
here, here, and here for a moderatly funny nintendo/microsoft jape.
Because the NYT is the famous one. You (and most other people) seem to have missed half the point - they haven't even bought an ad yet and they're getting huge press coverage. The advert is going to generate 'x' new users. The press coverage about the advert being bought will generate 'y' new users. I suggest 'y > x'.
Is marketing really so hard for geeks to understand? The buying of the advert in the NYT is a story in its own right. The manner of the advert's funding and the advert being in the most highbrow and famous of news papers is what makes it worth talking about.
Ok, so most of the Journals lack even a scrap of entertainment value... but the data feeds are normally fun. Is there anyone left that hasn't wasted a few bytes on the following url?
Hint - its a constantly updating list of all the new images posted to journals. After a while you give up waiting for a hot chick to post and decide crazy survey graphics are as good as it gets. And then some hot chick posts her birthday party pictures, but she's only 14 and suddenly you wish you'd spent the day doing something else.
Maybe I'm in a minority of 1, but that review didn't seem very long to me. Sure its longer than a jacket summery... but it hardly does as far enough to be in-depth let alone deserve a warning.
anyway... better than the usual 'contents table' affair we get on slashdot I suppose. Hardly Sunday paper review long though.
Firstly it should be remembered that the 'owned' part is a bit subjective as most of the project could live on regardless of 'ownership' thanks to it being opensource. But regardless of that.. am I the only one that finds the prospect of microsoft buying SpamAssassin a bit odd? Microsoft to buy Network Associates?
At the very least they'd be buying the name and the tarted up version of SpamAssassin sold as SpamKiller.
I've got 4 invites to give away. If anyone wants them then sign up at 0daymeme.com and I'll pick 5 oh-so lucky people tomorrow. Users of other webmail services apply at their own risk!
If hotmail had blocked _this_ as spam then I wouldn't have been able to complain...
Torrents.co.uk also publishes an RSS feed of new shows, and has several links to auto-downloaders. These other downloaders don't bolt onto a PVR, which is a nice feature, but it is worth remembering that many trackers already have RSS feeds and there is _some_ software already out there.
This bug got a lot of coverage on the fc-test mailinglist:
archives here. Look for the thread "Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18". It makes very interesting reading. The inital post seems sensible enough, I think this is a serious issue, and the responses are really varied. Some people tried to suggest fixes, others pointed out it was too late as the ISOs had gone to mirrors... but there were also a suprising number of 'who cares' and all out flames.
Humm. Fedora have a lot to learn, and the standard 'Fedora is for hobbiests and Redhat is for people that don't want to get dirty' does really cut it. All distros should make an effort not to break things outside of their footprint. Pointing out how bad microsoft are at co-existing is no defense, the idea is to rise above not sink to their level.
Anyway. read the thread and see what you think. It may remind you that Fedora isn't for everyone. I think its an excellent distro.. but they're not the best at releases and pr.
Many people, esp our american friends, many not be familar with the sheer scale of the BBC's operation. There is a lot of dressing applied to their funding but in essence almost every UK home pays a BBC tax, giving them vast cash funds and allowing them to take a 'long term' view to development.
This is very unpopular with their competition. People like Sky (NewsCorp) and ITV ('free' UK advert funded network tv) have no means of building the digital services the BBC have. Lets face it - both buy in a lot of programming from the US and that doesn't work well online.
At a recent LINX meeting (a meeting of all the major UK ISPs and many of the major european ISPs) where the BBC gave a presentation about their 'Summer of sports' coverage. They are predicting up to 12Gbps (yes Gigabits) leaving their network during the olympics. This is a huge undertaking and requires them to put Gbps direct connections into the major UK ISPs such as BT. Without private peering of this type the BBC couldn't cope, LINX couldn't cope, the target ISP couldn't cope, it'd be meltdown all round. Their presentation was aimed at heading off a potential doom of them DOSing a major ISP into the ground.
They're using Real at the moment. If they eventually move to an open codec the it will become a MAJOR player overnight. A national broadcaster using a codec to pump out Gigabits per second of content is the only case study/endorsement needed.
I've not spoken to the techs pushing this within the BBC but the feeling I have from whitepapers, presentations and rumour are:
- they need to be pragmatic. Its public money they're spending and the solution has to work. Currently the only solutions that work are propeirtary codecs.
- They are under attack from the competition, who want to cut off their r&d funding which they see as unfair.
- The intend to share their technology and want to grow the stability and performance through sharing things with their peers.
For BBC network info (and a boatload of mrtg goodness) visit the ever popular support pages
The bbc accepts feedback on stories. It is worth letting them know that there is no evidence to suggest the involvement of members of the linux community, they may be involved or they may be a handy group to frame. If this wasn't 'scary computers viruses' the media would be be more sceptical of the obvious conclusion.
The biggest (in terms of value, profits and probably fan base) soccer team in the world (Manchester United) has the devil as its logo/mascot.
They even have a fluffy man-in-suit devil called 'Fred the Red' that greets kids at the game and appears in comic strips in the match program. They used to be widely known as 'The Red Devils' but this does seem to have lost some popularity recently.
If they can turn over many, many millions with a devil on every shirt is it really a hinderence to an OS?
I think the name 'Red Devils' was originally used by a local rugby league team (Salford) who were given it when touring.. apparently some opponent(s) was/were badly injured (or killed) during the tour. The name then jumped a couple of miles to Manchester United. Looks like Salford are now 'The Salford City Reds'. How pleasant.
Does anyone have an example of a file that doesn't pass thi filter? Obviously there are some minor legal considerations, but no doubt its possible to make something that fails the filter but would pass a legal test.. anyone got a link?
So you have 2 mail servers with mx priorities as follows:
mail.someplace.com 10 mail.otherplace.com 20
if your someplace.com domain expires (hey, it happens) all your mail bounces thanks to verisigns ace "Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3". The backup mx record, which is there to cover failures like domains expiring, is never tried. In the 'real' world.. where lookups on dead domains fail... the backup server would be used.
Thats a bigger problem than all this spam checking people are getting worked up about. If they both had priority 10 (a simple load balancing arrangement) then half your mail would bounce and half would be ok.
Some improvement! Patches to BIND aren't the answer. Verisign need to be made to stop breaking the internet.
"I look at Sendmail and don't see anything that would allow you to throttle mail volume"
ISP's offering dialup services generally know the CLID and maybe the name & address of a caller.. but its too much hassle to do anything about bulk mailers that use the service. If I go and sign up with a free isp I can send a huge volume of spam before I get banned and there is a very low chance of any comeback.
What tools are available for SMTP gateways (such as sendmail, exim etc) that let you trottle mail based on the sending address / user (maybe tied into radius)? So i can allow normall users to send thier 20 messages per connection by automatically make it unattractive to people sending 1000's. If each subsequent message from a user has a longer and longer transmission time (insert some arbitary delays etc) then they won't relay through the isp server.
Any ideas? I was talking to a friend recently that works at a small isp and he has the exact problem above. They give out "free" accounts (earning off the call revenue) and spammers clog up the smtp server with really vast volumes of junk in the mail queues... after all - most addresses on spam lists are duds.
And www.starbucks.com is "temporarily closed for maintenance". I assume that was thier site.. not somewhere I've ever tried to go before.
"Starbucks.com is temporarily closed for maintenance. Please call 1-800-STARBUC to place an order. Customer service representatives are available to assist you during the following hours:
There are heads of HTPC cases out there, if you look hard enough. All the shuttle cases still look like PCs, just PCs with plastic "chrome" on them. I managed to hunt down a case that came in Gold and more or less matches my Marantz 6200 AV Amp (a beast of a machine). Sure it costs a heap and has to be imported from Korea but check out the pictures...
Slashdot Mirror
This is Old News. Click on the link for the proof that this story broke 17hrs ago. Come on slashdot, you can do better than this...
I like the way the screenshot tree shows the cdrecord
Here are some mirrored screenshots, if anyone cares: one two three four five
Wow. Only Jan 6th and we've had 4 wired articles posted to the frontpage this year already. Did they give the slashdot eds subscriptions for xmas or something?
The only story that hasn't been linked is the fake "Suck My Tiny Yellow Balls" story everyone else is running. See here, here, and here for a moderatly funny nintendo/microsoft jape.
But seriously... enough wired articles!
BlogIM has allowed you to update your blog via IM for ages.
(Although the site is a tad stalled. And it remains, as is famously the case for all the author's projects, about 2 weeks from true completion).
The new homepage points to http://www.google.com/firefox. Fire your conspiracy theories at will...
Because the NYT is the famous one. You (and most other people) seem to have missed half the point - they haven't even bought an ad yet and they're getting huge press coverage. The advert is going to generate 'x' new users. The press coverage about the advert being bought will generate 'y' new users. I suggest 'y > x'.
Is marketing really so hard for geeks to understand? The buying of the advert in the NYT is a story in its own right. The manner of the advert's funding and the advert being in the most highbrow and famous of news papers is what makes it worth talking about.
I keep telling people that you're not a real spectrum nut unless you've got your pride and joy hanging on the office wall, with the original manuals and a signed photo of sir clive himself.
The chap at the gallery claimed they don't get many computers in to be framed. I find that hard to understand...
Ok, so most of the Journals lack even a scrap of entertainment value... but the data feeds are normally fun. Is there anyone left that hasn't wasted a few bytes on the following url?
http://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest-img.bml
Hint - its a constantly updating list of all the new images posted to journals. After a while you give up waiting for a hot chick to post and decide crazy survey graphics are as good as it gets. And then some hot chick posts her birthday party pictures, but she's only 14 and suddenly you wish you'd spent the day doing something else.
Maybe I'm in a minority of 1, but that review didn't seem very long to me. Sure its longer than a jacket summery... but it hardly does as far enough to be in-depth let alone deserve a warning.
anyway... better than the usual 'contents table' affair we get on slashdot I suppose. Hardly Sunday paper review long though.
my sig advert is self-blocking.
http://gaminguk.net/d3pcdownloadfinal.avi, another version just for you.
VIDEO: [DIVX] 480x360 24bpp 30.000 fps 1756.6 kbps (214.4 kbyte/s)
AUDIO: 22050 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 16000->88200 (128.0 kbit)
UK Based mirror: teaser.avi 8.7MB
And a poster of the logo, artwork etc: poster.jpg 96KB
Firstly it should be remembered that the 'owned' part is a bit subjective as most of the project could live on regardless of 'ownership' thanks to it being opensource. But regardless of that.. am I the only one that finds the prospect of microsoft buying SpamAssassin a bit odd?
Microsoft to buy Network Associates?
At the very least they'd be buying the name and the tarted up version of SpamAssassin sold as SpamKiller.
I've got 4 invites to give away. If anyone wants them then sign up at 0daymeme.com and I'll pick 5 oh-so lucky people tomorrow. Users of other webmail services apply at their own risk!
If hotmail had blocked _this_ as spam then I wouldn't have been able to complain...
Torrents.co.uk also publishes an RSS feed of new shows, and has several links to auto-downloaders. These other downloaders don't bolt onto a PVR, which is a nice feature, but it is worth remembering that many trackers already have RSS feeds and there is _some_ software already out there.
This bug got a lot of coverage on the fc-test mailinglist: archives here. Look for the thread "Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18". It makes very interesting reading. The inital post seems sensible enough, I think this is a serious issue, and the responses are really varied. Some people tried to suggest fixes, others pointed out it was too late as the ISOs had gone to mirrors... but there were also a suprising number of 'who cares' and all out flames.
Humm. Fedora have a lot to learn, and the standard 'Fedora is for hobbiests and Redhat is for people that don't want to get dirty' does really cut it. All distros should make an effort not to break things outside of their footprint. Pointing out how bad microsoft are at co-existing is no defense, the idea is to rise above not sink to their level.
Anyway. read the thread and see what you think. It may remind you that Fedora isn't for everyone. I think its an excellent distro.. but they're not the best at releases and pr.
Many people, esp our american friends, many not be familar with the sheer scale of the BBC's operation. There is a lot of dressing applied to their funding but in essence almost every UK home pays a BBC tax, giving them vast cash funds and allowing them to take a 'long term' view to development.
This is very unpopular with their competition. People like Sky (NewsCorp) and ITV ('free' UK advert funded network tv) have no means of building the digital services the BBC have. Lets face it - both buy in a lot of programming from the US and that doesn't work well online.
At a recent LINX meeting (a meeting of all the major UK ISPs and many of the major european ISPs) where the BBC gave a presentation about their 'Summer of sports' coverage. They are predicting up to 12Gbps (yes Gigabits) leaving their network during the olympics. This is a huge undertaking and requires them to put Gbps direct connections into the major UK ISPs such as BT. Without private peering of this type the BBC couldn't cope, LINX couldn't cope, the target ISP couldn't cope, it'd be meltdown all round. Their presentation was aimed at heading off a potential doom of them DOSing a major ISP into the ground.
They're using Real at the moment. If they eventually move to an open codec the it will become a MAJOR player overnight. A national broadcaster using a codec to pump out Gigabits per second of content is the only case study/endorsement needed.
I've not spoken to the techs pushing this within the BBC but the feeling I have from whitepapers, presentations and rumour are:
- they need to be pragmatic. Its public money they're spending and the solution has to work. Currently the only solutions that work are propeirtary codecs.
- They are under attack from the competition, who want to cut off their r&d funding which they see as unfair.
- The intend to share their technology and want to grow the stability and performance through sharing things with their peers.
For BBC network info (and a boatload of mrtg goodness) visit the ever popular support pages
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3281777.stm
The bbc accepts feedback on stories. It is worth letting them know that there is no evidence to suggest the involvement of members of the linux community, they may be involved or they may be a handy group to frame. If this wasn't 'scary computers viruses' the media would be be more sceptical of the obvious conclusion.
The biggest (in terms of value, profits and probably fan base) soccer team in the world (Manchester United) has the devil as its logo/mascot.
They even have a fluffy man-in-suit devil called 'Fred the Red' that greets kids at the game and appears in comic strips in the match program. They used to be widely known as 'The Red Devils' but this does seem to have lost some popularity recently.
If they can turn over many, many millions with a devil on every shirt is it really a hinderence to an OS?
I think the name 'Red Devils' was originally used by a local rugby league team (Salford) who were given it when touring.. apparently some opponent(s) was/were badly injured (or killed) during the tour. The name then jumped a couple of miles to Manchester United. Looks like Salford are now 'The Salford City Reds'. How pleasant.
Does anyone have an example of a file that doesn't pass thi filter? Obviously there are some minor legal considerations, but no doubt its possible to make something that fails the filter but would pass a legal test.. anyone got a link?
So you have 2 mail servers with mx priorities as follows:
mail.someplace.com 10
mail.otherplace.com 20
if your someplace.com domain expires (hey, it happens) all your mail bounces thanks to verisigns ace "Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3". The backup mx record, which is there to cover failures like domains expiring, is never tried. In the 'real' world.. where lookups on dead domains fail... the backup server would be used.
Thats a bigger problem than all this spam checking people are getting worked up about. If they both had priority 10 (a simple load balancing arrangement) then half your mail would bounce and half would be ok.
Some improvement! Patches to BIND aren't the answer. Verisign need to be made to stop breaking the internet.
"I look at Sendmail and don't see anything that would allow you to throttle mail volume"
ISP's offering dialup services generally know the CLID and maybe the name & address of a caller.. but its too much hassle to do anything about bulk mailers that use the service. If I go and sign up with a free isp I can send a huge volume of spam before I get banned and there is a very low chance of any comeback.
What tools are available for SMTP gateways (such as sendmail, exim etc) that let you trottle mail based on the sending address / user (maybe tied into radius)? So i can allow normall users to send thier 20 messages per connection by automatically make it unattractive to people sending 1000's. If each subsequent message from a user has a longer and longer transmission time (insert some arbitary delays etc) then they won't relay through the isp server.
Any ideas? I was talking to a friend recently that works at a small isp and he has the exact problem above. They give out "free" accounts (earning off the call revenue) and spammers clog up the smtp server with really vast volumes of junk in the mail queues... after all - most addresses on spam lists are duds.
And www.starbucks.com is "temporarily closed for maintenance". I assume that was thier site.. not somewhere I've ever tried to go before.
"Starbucks.com is temporarily closed for maintenance.
Please call 1-800-STARBUC to place an order.
Customer service representatives are available to assist you
during the following hours:
Monday - Friday, 5am - 8pm PST
Saturday - Sunday, 6am - 6pm PST
We apologize for any inconvenience."
And because I'm not cool enough to avoid replying to my own post -
The gallery section of this site is awesome: Koreamod.com
There are heads of HTPC cases out there, if you look hard enough. All the shuttle cases still look like PCs, just PCs with plastic "chrome" on them. I managed to hunt down a case that came in Gold and more or less matches my Marantz 6200 AV Amp (a beast of a machine). Sure it costs a heap and has to be imported from Korea but check out the pictures...
p c_board&y_number=65 p c_board&y_number=70&nnew=2 p c_board&y_number=79&nnew=2
http://www.e-capsule.co.kr/shop/read.cgi?board=ht
http://www.e-capsule.co.kr/shop/read.cgi?board=ht
http://www.e-capsule.co.kr/shop/read.cgi?board=ht
http://www.moddin.net/review.asp?ReviewID=45
I found it via the "Home Theater Computers" forum at:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/
Take the hint - look to Korea for cool cases.