User: zark

start with green beans (or at least a grinder)!

On: What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee?

My personal solution:

• I roast my own. I use a Hearthware Precision roaster. I buy my green beans from http://www.coffeeco.com.au/ (you have to go to the 'Orders' page to see the green bean options). I roast Mocha Harar, Brazil Cerrado, and New Guinea Peaberry separately, using smell and colour to judge when it is done rather than the timer, and then mix them together before grinding.
• I use a proper burr grinder; a Gaggia MDF. I only grind what I need immediately (which actually means I'd be better off with a doserless grinder compared to the MDF, but hey).
• I use a classic Bialetti Moka Express (those stovetop octagonal aluminium things).

The biggest thing is the fresh grind. Pre-ground coffee is just awful.
Using green beans means you can buy in bulk and not worry about freshness; green beans last for a long time.
One day I'll buy a proper espresso machine, but I just don't have a spare $AU 2k+ to drop on that at the moment.

a different approach to the same problem

On: To Flush Or Not To Flush

The building where I work (in Adelaide, Australia) has waterless urinals, which use a different system: http://www.desert.com.au/ Note that our urinals were originally water-based (big stainless steel trough things), they just disconnected the water and used the cubes instead. Works well, no smell. Only time we had a problem was when the outlet got blocked in one bathroom and the urinal slowly filled up with urine... but at least it didn't flood the way it would have with a water flush.

Re:Connectors in my PC

On: Connectors: A History of Their Technology?

until they get bent.

I was a PhD student...

On: How Did You Become a UNIX Administrator?

I slid sideways from a CS PhD I got bored with. An
opening as an admin in the department came up, so I
took it. Never looked back since.... and I think
this is a pretty common scenario, and not just for
CS. EG David Dawes (xfree86 dude) was the sysadmin
in the physics department at my uni and he started
out the same way IIRC (sorry David if I'm mistaken!)

Re:Wonderful to call DeCSS a "Digital Crowbar"

On: Report From The 2600 Appeal Hearing

No, but I bet some places it is illegal to posess lockpicks.

Now lockpicks have a valid use (if you are a locksmith) but more general ownership is a problem => they are heavily regulated.

Executables based on DeCSS aren't currently used for distribution of decrypted video streams but once we have enough bandwidth video napster will happen, and the MPAA are dead scared of that. This is a preemtive strike.

Actually there is an interesing issue here:

blank bits of metal I can shape into lockpicks are legal
tools for shaping them into lockpicks are legal (hacksaw? pliers?)
instructions for doing it are legal (cf anarchists cookbook)
resulting lockpick is illegal to possess

blank bits of metal == free disk blocks
tools == compiler
instructions == DeCSS source
lockpick == _executable_ form of DeCSS

So you can easily imagine that it might be illegal to own, distribute and sell binaries containing DeCSS code, and that you could do what you like with the source code under freedom of speech protection. In which case the MPAA should lose this case but win a hypothetical later one against someone with a binary which produces unencrypted streams to stdout.

So at that point the question will be, does the law upholding free speech rights protect binary object code? I guess this is part of the point of the arguments blurring the distinction by representing the code in as many different ways as possible - if you can show that there is a continuum all the way from stilted english to an executable pattern of bits then you pretty much have to either extend free speech rights to the binary or ban the source. Oh hang on, what are they talking about in court at the moment :-)

--
excuse of the day: dual-homed topology exhaustion!