Monday, April 30, 2001

At the time and date of this Blog, The Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran is transmitting on 13.375, which is one of the Lincolnshire Poachers regular spots....hmmmmmmmmmm.

Mobile Photography

High-quality telephones are only half the story. The DoCoMo store also featured a range of more specialized mobile Internet appliances. The two examples shown here are intended for mobile photography. Camessepetit and Eggy both let users snap photos, which they can then decorate with cartoonish overlays and transmit to others who are using similar devices or regular i-mode telephones. Camessepetit (left) and Eggy (right) mobile photography products from DoCoMo Camessepetit is clearly intended for children, and I applaud DoCoMo for shipping simplified mobile products for this demanding user population. Eggy also does digital movies but seems more nerdy. How can I apply the term "nerdy" to a product named "Eggy"? Well, anything with buttons labeled mode, menu, and shift definitely has nerdy tendencies, regardless of what it's called. Maybe DoCoMo should have applied a little more usability to Eggy before it was released. Well well wellie well well!! How long do you think that we will have to wait for these incredibly beautiful useful and fun phonez to reach our shores? probably never is the answer, and that my friends, SUCKS.
The report of the Demise of The Buzzer was premature; we check the buzzer every day, and the day that we thought it had gone west, it actually became audible extremely late in the day. This may have been to the coronal mass ejections / sunsopots that have been blasting the earth this month. Normally, we can start to hear The Buzzer late in the afternoon, but that day, it started to become barely audible at around 7ish, which is *really* late. As soon as we heard the Buzzer in its normal place, we n00ked the post, which accounts for the blotting out...

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

Laziness is one of themost powerful energies in the universe. Closely related to entropy, laziness is like heroin/morphine/percocet addiction. Its ssooooooooooo good, so enveloping, warm comfortable and reassuring, that once you have to give it up, its like being one of the living dead. Like chemical drug addiction, the Rich can afford to feed their laziness habbit. They can swan around "stoned" all day, drinking coffe, excersising, watching Dragonball Z, screwing, what-ever. And as it is with chemical addiction (coke), the "old money" Rich mind set can live with laziness, and are not destryoed by it; just look at all the pop stars / lottery winners who get rich quick, stop working, and then die because they get "bored". Yes dear friends, if you can, choose laziness, "Ne travaillez jamais" they said in '68 (aparently). Words to live by....

Tuesday, April 24, 2001

The draconian-sounding Italian law about people running websites needing to join the Italian equivalent of the NUJ, have a "responsible editor" etc. became law on the 5th or April. I've been following rants about it but don't think I understand what it really amounts to. Broadly speaking, it seems to be in line with other Italian legislation in that it can't possibly mean what it appears to, but if the authorities decide they don't like you they can probably use it to put you in prison for ever. I read a Q&A with one of the supporters of the law which read a lot like HO stuff here about why RIPA isn't scary. Does everyone with a website need to register? No, of course not, that would be silly. So who, then? People who run online newspapers. How do you know if you run an online newspaper? If you make information available to the general public. So, any web page? No, only if you update it regularly. etc. etc. This is from memory. I certainly didn't come away with a clear idea of whether my "recreational maths books" web page would be an online newspaper if I updated it every time I bought or read a recreational maths book. Some of the people who are worried about the law claim that you can theoretically get a life sentence for breaking it (because anonymous publishing is very very illegal in Italy). Mind you, Italy has some odd laws. It's illegal to be rude about foreign heads of state. Note that as the Vatican is a foreign country this would make it illegal to be rude about the Pope. Hmm.

Saturday, April 21, 2001

"violent style " - now were talking! cheers

Friday, April 20, 2001

as a new england conservatory alum i congratulate you on going that route. there's no richer road but beware the temptress of fame et al. it can corrupt wildly and YOU can get lost in the process quite easly. it's taken me 4 years to get my creative self back. the group favors the median. good luck.....i'm sure your head is screwed on right already though as you probably wonldn't be posting here if it weren't. sculpting? new face lift for jonas

Thursday, April 19, 2001

actually it's ie5.5 but who's counting :). btw:sbs2000 is like chewing rocks. i had just made a 500$ support call to ms and found out that almost the entire first shipment of sbs2000 was sent out with the wrong keycodes! now that's corporate caring....to make matters worse the entire install will run and ONLY THEN will you be notified that the incorrect key was entered. i can't believe this sh@tty product. shame on them. it'll eat up all your nntp, smtp and tcp/ip as well during this install. wish i didn't have to work with this sh@t but you gotta pay if you want to play.

Wednesday, April 18, 2001

Somebody forgot to tell Alcatel that the Track Changes feature of Microsoft Word is a dangerous thing to use when you plan to make the document available online and the publisher of said document doesn't have a clue about how to merge the changes in permanently prior to making it publicly available for all to see. With all of their commentary intact, the document was made available online, and is somewhat enlightening to those that really believe that these companies care about customers. Check out the entirety of Alcatel's classic PR move.

Tuesday, April 17, 2001

GNUPGP may compile on OSX before the {N}etwork {S} {A}ssociates get round to porting PGP...keep an eye out for it. http://www.linuxppc.org/software/index/gpgp.html Mozilla This is shaping up to be the only viable alternative to IE5/World subjugation. That was issue 14 btw.

Monday, April 16, 2001

Were really looking forward to trying OSX; we can run all of our legacy Mac apps, and all of the new naitive stuff in a robust and utterly kewl environment. Linux may well be made redundant by OSX, since it does now what Linux will do in another five years.; appeal to the dummies as well as the 3|337. *nix dudez. (and people who need to run ATM) :] did you write that post in IE for OSX? Or is that not out yet?? It will be a toatl scream to read the millions of posts from the LaMeRs about how they trashed their systems cuz they were logged in as w007 when they were "practicing that horrible command line stuff".
so sorry to tell everone this but Joey Ramone has passed on. a loss for all of us.

Sunday, April 15, 2001

i am normal-i am clean i'm not frightened-i won't scream

Friday, April 13, 2001

Try these leet codes for your Nokia fone: this one will switch your fone to "Enhanched Full rate codec". *3370# EFR will be activated after a reboot of the phone ( consumes more power ) #3370# EFR will be switched off after a reboot of the phone.
7 hours bound in the cords of love love and betrayal go hand in glove... the chance is lost. upgrade woes? at work today a botched install on one of their nt4 mail machines ate the exchange records for over three hundred users. via the backup all was saved all be it for my nerves and the lack of food in my system. unfortunate for me i had to deal with a horrible os but it's not my choice of platforms. also thru this trying situation ip was taken away and the raid controller stopped functioning.....needless to say i can relate. nothing like running a ms network except the steady drip of never ending water torture. also here in the us...northpoint(line supplier) filed chap 11 and cut their service......:without notice from their wonderful isp no web-no mail et al. i had heard that 100,000 accounts were dropped point blank and again without notice. comcast(cable) and verizon(pstn) are scrambling to further their already controlling grasp on the communications industry in the mid-atlantic states. sad. by money...b(u)y freedom. hey home user you want vpn? take that cable modem at 40$ per month and up it to 90$. what else is included in this price? nothing! just an open port for pptp. again.. ...sad. can someone say "anti-trust"?

Wednesday, April 11, 2001

Yesterday, tried to upgrade from Mozilla 17 to Mozilla .8, and when untarred the package, the sytem got hosed. x refused to start. Took the opportunity to n00k� the installation and then upgrade to mandrake 7.2, this time without KDE (220meg) and a whole bunch of other stuff, like enlightenment. Couldnt do the upgrade the "right way�"; the mandrake 7.2 installer has a broken part in it; if it detects that you dont have enough space to upgrade, it gets stuck in a loop with an error dialogue. Have limited space on this drive (1.5gig); need an 8 gig drive to do a less restriced install..then again, its "good practice�" (in both ways) to choose and install each package individually. These Linux installers are getting better and better. Next, going to give Debian another try, either progeny or the "real thing�". The potato 2.2 installer failed to create a /dev/mouse and frankly, "we need to work!�"

Tuesday, April 10, 2001

ye link below doth not work!

check these instead, they rawk! "Anti-Census Fever Running Wild" "The Most Dangerous Site on the Internet" 48% of Americans said "privacy concerns" made them less likely to answer all the questions on the long form privacy international Predictably there is nothing (to be found on Google) about anti census activity related to the UK. If you find some, post it!

Sunday, April 08, 2001

Australian Jedi

UPDATED: that link is busted: try the ones above
Scopeware This is something VERY interesting; read the essays by David Gerlerntner about information represented in streams, and then try it out!
X-Envelope-From: ?????@?????? From: "Simon" ?????@??????> To: Subject: Fw: Jedi Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 23:44:54 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-Envelope-To: irdial@irdialsys.win-uk.net You may have already seen this. . . ----- Original Message ----- From: ?????@?????? To: *********** Sent: Friday, April 06, 2001 3:31 PM Subject: Jedi As some of you may know there is a census coming around on Sunday April 29 2001 For those who don't know, a census is where the government collates general information about it's residents (number of people living in your house, religion, etc) Apparently, if there are enough people in Great Britain, who put down a religion that isn't mentioned on the census form it becomes a fully recognised and legal religion. It usually takes about 10,000 people to nominate the same religion. It is for this reason that it has been suggested that anyone who does not have a dominant religion to put "Jedi" as their religion. Send this on to all your friends and tell them to put down "Jedi" on their census form. And remember ......If you are a member of the Jedi religion then you are by default a 'Jedi Knight'. So If this has been your dream since you were 4 years old.... Do it cos you love Star Wars, If not........... then just do it to annoy people. "May the Force be with you!"

Saturday, April 07, 2001

would you want a say if you were offered it, and if you were, what would you? -"nuke canada! 1400 megatons straight to the dome piece." that would be exactly what i would say. full moon tonight....go outside for a walk...we have mist here. house groove makes you move.......

Thursday, April 05, 2001

perhaps next time the mob won't be the tool.

Tuesday, April 03, 2001

Nuts and bolts

One of Extreme's key tenants requires programmers to release a nuts-and-bolts version of its product to the customer first and then continue to build additional features afterward. This immediately remedies the time-to-market problem, and customers wind up with a less buggy product to which features are added as the customer demands. Extreme also requires programmers to maintain a direct relationship with the customer. Rather than packing a product with thousands of features, the customer can specify exactly what they want, and the programmer can focus on perfecting a few features. Programmers must write tests for their own programs before they begin coding. These tests are used instead of an independent "quality assurance," or testing, group--a technique that will save time, according to Extreme's advocates. During the coding process, programmers also practice a technique called re-factoring. This involves constantly working to simplify the code. By keeping code clean and defining things only once, programmers reduce the number of errors that must be addressed later. For code writers themselves, one of the most striking differences is Extreme's requirement of pair programming. Once they switch to pairs, many programmers say they prefer it because the team approach can dramatically boost productivity and quality. Extreme also mandates communal ownership of all code. http://www.xprogramming.com/what_is_xp.htm
basically i my opinion gwb is a tool. a puppet if you will and for that matter they all have been and probably always will be. but it does matter who they are the puppets for. and this stat:"84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year" out of 535 is pretty poor #'s let face it. if anything most people in congress and in the upper levels of the us gov are 'insulated monks'. they just seem worldly as they have had to put up with each others bullshit for years. it's all a big f#ing joke man, come on. we have no real say and will never have it again unless people decide on their own that they are ready to release control which will not happen. i am not advocating giving up on trying to get things done but it's quite futile and getting more so daily. this is the truth anyway you would choose to slice it i'm sorry to say. yes yes we are at the top of the game(us) but at what cost? guts?????? perhaps the ones on the sidewalks of our bloody past and future. we are guily of genocide even nazi germany can't claim the success we have achieved in this dept. are we the only country to have such a past? ov course not but it's easy to forget when your drinking a f&*ing pepsi. clinton, was he better?? of course not it's all a sham. that the fucking truth! nike/sprite/n' sync is there any difference? cisco will be the death of us all.......perhaps that's taking it too far. or is it? we can crawl into our little cyber worlds of our own making or open the windows and let the fresh air in!!!!!!!

Monday, April 02, 2001

http://psychoexgirlfriend.com/
Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics: *29 have been accused of spousal abuse *7 have been arrested for fraud *19 have been accused of writing bad checks *117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at leased 2 businesses *3 have done time for assault *71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit *14 have been arrested on drug-related charges *8 have been arrested for shoplifting *21 are currently defendants in lawsuits *84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year Can you guess which organization this is? Give up yet? It's the 535 members of the United States Congress. The same group that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.

Whatever.

This is doing the rounds amongst the "office drones with email circuits". What it implies is that congressmen with the above attributes are not fit to rule because they have made these "mistakes", and it further implies that only people with "clean records" should rule. I beg to differ. These people are EXACTLY the sort of people that we need to rule; people with REAL EXPERIENCE of REAL LIFE, not insulated monks who know nothing about the way that everybody lives. Its great that GWB has snorted coke, maybe he will have a more rational approach to drug regulation. "Slick Willy"; I'd rather have a man with balls in charge than some vile holier than thou abstainer; he even had the guts to apologies for the MK ULTRA atrocities. What other president had the guts to even admit that it went on, much less apologize. Life is dirty. Life has rough edges. Congressmen have to deal with all of the most vile manipulative elements in the USA, and in order to repel these evil men, they have to have direct knowledge of "evil" and all of the bad practices that the "normal" (those who are not holding high office) folk get up to. In any case all of this is moot; in the USA, people elect their representatives, and all of this stuff is known BEFORE they are elected to public office. The above list only shows that America has got it right; they elect their peers to run their government, not empty shells or false "role models" who are living double lives. Americans can take the truth. They are miles ahead of every other country on earth. But you knew that...
Now THAT looks interesting; this really is the way forward; differentiation through taking responsibility for your tools; as soon as you use software thats publicly available, which today pretty much means keyboards as well as the accursed laptops, you are instanly trapped in a sound "gamut" from which its difficult to escape. If however, you build your own tools, you are working in your own space, and it will be very much more simple to break out and really explore. It would be great to hear this machine in action; I wonder what it would sound like very loud..... It looks like something that would be sensitive to how it was amplified, and also sensitive to how much the battery had drained. There is nothing quite as lovely as the sound of battery powered amplification / crude synthesiser that is running on an almost dead set of batteries. What other lamps has Davros been hiding under his bushel??!
sell it to me!!!!! nah, just kidding. enjoy that thing. much respect to you for the motivation and ingenuity.