Random Noise Part 2

Jon Stewart on Crossfire - get it via Bittorrent or IFILM. The following Daily Show (IFILM) and some sort of response from the crossfire guys. The Bowtie journalist (as I will hence-forth refer to Tucker Carlson) was stupid enough to try to make fun of a professional comedian (the best since Jerry Seinfeld retired). The result? He made an ass of himself on international TV.

Jabber for MSN messenger. How nice considering that Relax just got the jabber server up @chefax he has also been experimenting with wikis. Wikis are overused and abused; their default UIs (which most people don't change) are not only ugly it's also BAD (for the use that they are given). Stop you are hurting the web. That doesn't mean that I hate wikis. I like wikis. Wikipedia rules (favorite definition).

Speaking of Relax, if it hadn’t been for him I would've never realized that the porn community (???) is an early adopter of social technologies. But before we go any deeper (no pun intended) into that subject, I would like to link to this blog.
I finally saw I, Robot - best movie I've seen in a couple of years (at least). I only read Asimov's Foundation books which are the best sci-fi books in my library. I regret not having read the others. It now feels kind of heretic being interested in AI (and related subjects) and not having read Asimov's classic science fiction books on the subject.

Which File Extension are You?

Which File Extension are You?

Magnatune

Magnatune (via Doug Kaye, previous post), from their webpage:

We're a record label. But we're not evil.
We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 326 complete MP3 albums we've picked (not 30 second snippets).
We let the music sell itself, because we think that's the best way to get you excited by it.
Our selection is intentionally small: we never waste your time with mediocre music.
If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use.
Artists keep half of every purchase. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep all the rights to their music.
No major label connections and no venture capital.
We are not evil.

I only found it less than 30 minutes ago and I've already decided to purchase an album (as soon as I get myself a credit card). The album in question is Ehren Starks - The Depths of a Year and I'm listening to it as I type this. After thinking for a while about it, I'm going with the physical CD, I think the security and the options (rip it yourself, play it in a normal stereo without mp3 support - like the one currently in my car) are worth the extra ~$8 USD.
Final remark: Magnatune is a good idea, a good site and a good service.

The Da Vinci Code

When I first heard of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code I assumed it was just another over hyped thriller with the same old dynamics and a rehashed story. This weekend I was happy to be proven wrong. I'm used to seeing right thru a plot long before it begins to unfold and this book was no exception (for the most part). What was indeed exceptional was the pace at which the story progressed and revelations were made, it gave quite an intensity to the book - that and the fact that I had a quite large, unintentional dose of caffeine which kept me awake and in a somewhat excited state (like an electron after being radiated with enough energy to make it go to the other side of the universe and back before it even left) during the entire weekend.
I'm still not myself (whatever that means) - I’ve been acting weird and confused all day - more so than usually.
Anyway, the book was interesting and I recommend it to anyone who has too little blood in the caffeine circulating through his or her body. Whatever.

led pr0n

This post is rated X. (Via Adam)

Delicious Usefulness

When I began to use del.icio.us its usefulness was somewhat limited. I had Firefox's Bookmarks Synchronizer Extension and I also had them stored in HTML online. I figured I could use del.icio.us for pages I found useful but not worthy of being in my firefox bookmarks or just as a temporary bookmark until I had a chance to better evaluate the page. More recently I started using them for my blogmarks and newsmarks.
It is important to explain what I mean by blogmarks since there are different definitions of that word: for Simon Willison it is simply a separate link blog; Will Pate's definition: [blogmarks -] "These are links I find around the web that I want to bookmark and blog at the same time". There may be other definitions but like Simon pointed out, the word does not seem to have a widely accepted meaning yet. So I decided to give them another meaning (someone else might also have given them this meaning before me but how likely is that?). To me, a blogmark is a link to an entry in a blog. Likewise, a newsmark is simply a link to a given news item on a given website.
If I were to bookmark every 'bookmark worthy' blog entry or news in Firefox, my bookmarks file would quickly became huge (it already is big) and chaotic. However, del.icio.us makes 'size' (as in number of bookmars) largely irrelevant: it is extremelly easy to search and organize bookmarks. It also has the added usefulness of allowing my friends, readers (both of them), and perfect strangers to see what blog entries and news items I find interesting and relevant enough to be bookmarked.
Today while reading slashdot I came across an article entitled "IBM Tells SCO Court It Can't Find AIX-on-Power Code". I found it intriguing given the fact that AIX only runs on IBM's POWER (recently POWER4 & POWER5). After reading the article it was obvious that it was one of the worst examples of reporting I had ever seen - and I've seen Fox News. But this isn't a post about the article itself so I won't comment any further tough I will give some pointers: 1, 2, 3, 4. Funny posts: 1, 2.
If I can't remember all the good sites, how can I be expected to remember all the bad ones (like LinuxWorld.com)? Well, I can't but thanks to del.icio.us, I can keep a list with all the advantages I previously mentioned for blogmarks and newsmarks. Here it is: the BadSites tag.

Desktop Search Wars

The Desktop Search Wars are coming. For now, it is mainly a windows war but that is likely to change in the next 6 to 12 months. Google is the uncontested loser in technical terms tough it seems to wining in terms of popularity.
Me? I've chosen Copernic Desktop Search. Unlike GDS, it can read PDFs - given the fact that the majority of documents I have are in the PDF format you can understand why this is a requirement. It's more configurable than blinkx and has a better interface too. Both characteristics result in a more efficient, better searcher.


Tip for Firefox users: pick up Slogger.

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars

I'm sitting here typing this, listening to Aeryn's Funeral Theme - it somehow seems appropriate. I was amazed by this miniseries; Farscape was one of the best series ever, the miniseries had to live up to a high standard. And it did. In fact, in some ways, it even outdid the series. I can't get the scene were the command carriers emerge from the asteroid field of my mind. Or Rygel's underwater scenes. Breathtaking. That said, a two episode miniseries was far from enough to give a proper ending to farscape. The ending felt somewhat "Deus Ex Machina", nevertheless it was incredibly ironic: The very thing everyone was after almost destroyed them all and perhaps even more ironic is Scorpius' remark "This is insane".
I'm left with mixed feelings: I happy that the miniseries turned out this good and I'm sad because this is the end for Farscape. There will never be a series like Farscape. It was quite unique, unlike the many star treks, stargates and in some ways, even Andromeda - don't get me wrong, I like those series (especially DS9 & Andromeda) but they all feel the same (except DS9's final seasons and Andromeda's nietzschean/Tyr focused episodes). Farscape was somehow different.
So, should I be listening to Aeryn's Funeral Theme or Tchaykovsky's 1812 overture (which was played in season 3 of Farscape... or was it 4? It is all fading away so fast, like a dream after you wake up...)?

Dual Monitor

I just plugged in my old CRT monitor in a dualview mode. I had the idea to do this ever since I had this extra monitor lying around but I finally got to it when I saw this article. I placed my feedreader in the second monitor and firefox in the first. When I click on a link in the feedreader it opens a new background tab in firefox, courtesy of my favorite mozilla extension: Tabbrowser Extensions. Too bad my old monitor really sucks. I can't believed how I tolerated it for so long.

Automatic Document Classification

I've been having trouble organizing and finding almost anything in my 'Docs' directory and I was looking for something to do in python since I started learning it. Automatic document classification using Naive Bayesian classification seems like the ideal project. A tool to solve this problem will need to read TXTs, PDFs, PSs, HTMLs (single and multiple pages), CHMs, MS Office files, Open Office files, MS Reader files and probably a few others. Being capable of searching the web (and local drives) for related documents would also be cool; google's "related" search is a little less than perfect.

Google Desktop Search

I tried to use google's latest tool yesterday but indexing takes so long I decided to leave it indexing this morning while I'm here at FEUP. I've already been told blinkx is a lot better tough I haven't tried it either.

Random Noise

Cherry OS might be the best thing that has happened to Mac OS since BSD, if it manages to deliver (/.).
And while we're on the topic, who needs .Mac when you can have google? You get webmail without ads (at least for now...) or with tolerable and sometimes even useful text ads, good interface and functionality (searching, filters, labels, importing contacts from various sources), it's accessible via pop3, you can store files, blog and have a photo gallery with a 1GB limit. And the price? No, not $100/year. It's free! Oh and a lot of people actively developing tools for it should count for something.
People are finally waking up from the MySQL nightmare.
Parrot is interesting.
If I ever buy a PDA, I'll have to make an in-depth comparison between Microsoft Reader and Vade Mecum. Reader is looking a lot better from the outside.

EU invests in Grid Computing

Money put to good use if you ask me. One of the projects that will receive funding from the EU is NextGRID which addresses grid computing greatest problems. NextGRID will seek architectural solutions that streamline all aspects of Grid operation: installation and maintenance of the infrastructure, development and deployment of Grid applications, user orchestration of the resulting resources, and operation of business models and processes through which the use of Grid technology can be made economically viable.

The Car of The Future

Forget about KITT. If renault has its way, the car of the future will be more like KITT's arch-enemy, CARR.
But what really scares the hell out of me is that some (obviously insane) people think it's a good idea to put Microsoft Windows in control of a car.

The GDI Mess

Even if microsoft's scanner at windowsupdate tells you that you're safe you should run GDI Scan. Read this forum post too (thanks to Jon Udell).
Here's the results from my first run:

Scanning Drive C:...
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE11\MSO.DLL
Version: 11.0.5606.0
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll
Version: 6.0.2900.2180
C:\Program Files\Desktop Sidebar\gdiplus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\GDIPLUS.DLL
Version: 6.0.3260.0 <-- Vulnerable version
C:\Program Files\Symantec\Web Tools\GDIPlus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\sxs.dll
Version: 5.1.2600.2180
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\vgx.dll
Version: 6.0.2900.2180
C:\WINDOWS\system32\sxs.dll
Version: 5.1.2600.2180
C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.Windows.GdiPlus_6595b64144ccf1df_1.0.0.0_x-ww_8d353f13\GdiPlus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Possibly vulnerable (Windows Side-By-Side DLL)
C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.Windows.GdiPlus_6595b64144ccf1df_1.0.2600.2180_x-ww_522f9f82\GdiPlus.dll
Version: 5.1.3102.2180
Scan Complete.

Bad Luck, Pen Drives & Passwords

My motherboard decided to die on me so I was left without my desktop PC. No biggie, I still had my laptop. Unfortunately, its hard drive had other plans. Oh well, I still have access to various computers both at Chefax and at FEUP. And one thing all those computers have in common: USB ports for me to plug my pen drive. I don't just carry data in it:
- Portable Firefox (with all the extensions I use) & Thunderbird
- Putty (Chefax Mirror)
- Real VNC
- UPX
- Winpcap & Python installer for windows (linux usually has python installed)
- etc

Due to a rather uninteresting chain of events my pen drive was missing a key file - my keys file. I have a different password for every account I have (gmail, hotmail, blogger, etc) and while they are all cool, I change most of them before I can remember them. I use Keep Pass to store and access them. It has big advantages in terms of security – it allows me to store them securely which in turn allows me to choose better passwords AND change them more often. It has a problem tough: without the password database file, you can forget about accessing all those accounts. Well, not exactly. Every one of those passwords can be changed or mailed to me - if I have the email account password. I use a special mail account to register for services on the internet. It was meant to protect me against (technicalities aside) spam but because I use it often, the password stuck to my brain. I didn't feel like changing all those passwords just now tough... And that doesn't explain why I haven't posted. The explanation for that is laziness combined with a rather busy month...