lit.hatori42.com, distributed literature for the people. Think kuro5hin for fiction.
June 2001 Archives
Secrets of Web color revealed, some good tips and tricks for the color challenged.
From the register:
"Performance is let down, however, by the system bus speed which is limited to 66MHz. Desktop Macs and the PowerBook G4 have a bus speed of 100MHz, and the performance difference is evident in tests. Although fast, the iBook is slower than a similarly rated iMac, and the PowerBook G4 easily outperforms it ? but then as it costs £1000 more you would expect it to. Nevertheless, the iBook is fast enough for most tasks and applications you care to throw at it. Our only other complaint with regard to system specification is the amount of supplied RAM. Of the four iBook models available one ships with only 64MB, while the other three are stocked with 128MB. Given that Mac OS X - Apple's next-generation operating system - which is to be preinstalled on all new Macs, needs a minimum of 128MB to run, this is very poor. "
Amen brothers! Let us pour on the RAM! It is cheap, and cometh from the heavens to speedeth our computing needs!
OK, sports fans. I have long been an advocate of thin-client solutions. Furthermore, i think that Apple has a really good opportunity to help themselves out. Think of this: a NIC like thin client, with an LCD and the usual hookups, tied intoa MacOSX server, netbooting, and with NFS mounts over either gigabit ethernet or wireless (all of which Apple has demonstrated). Kinda like the stuff
Sun is doing, but with MacOS and Mac::Office. No company wants to switch over completely to Sun, but what about Apple? hmm.....
This could be the era of thin clients. Of NFS and netboot. Low TCO and logging in from anywhere.
I am a big advocate of this technology in the educational market and workplace. Think about it: why does a sales guy or a kindergarterner need their own computer just to do simple stuff? It is time to consolidate our computing power and use it wisely.
Disabling Smart Tags under Apache 1.2 and later
From Red Hat Apache Guru Mark Cox, via Drew Meeks at Red Hat:I grabbed the whole thing incase the refered site disapears in the future.AddingMark and Drew haven't tested this, but I pass it along. You can test the efficacy of this approach at http://209.204.184.53/, which returns bothHeader add MSSmartTagsPreventParsing "TRUE"to httpd.conf should add the response header to every page served.MSSmartTagsPreventParsing: TRUE X-Meta-MSSmartTagsPreventParsing: TRUEas response headers, the latter since X-Meta-Foo in the response headers is interpreted by some browsers as equivalent to a <META name="Foo"> tag. http://209.204.184.50/ returns the same content without the above headers.
Requires that mod_headers is installed on your copy of Apache: See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_headers.html. You can alter the scope of this by placing the "Header" directive inside a VirtualHost, Directory, Location, or Files directive.
More Overheated Porn Hysteria
this time in the Canadian Navy.
Commodore Eric Lerhe, the chief of the Canadian Pacific fleet, has been suspended from duty and faces a possible court-martial. For high treason? No, for looking at porn on the web.Now what do ya'll native Canadians have to comment?
A man does not sexually harass women because he reads pornography. A man sexually harasses women because he's an asshole.is probably the best rebuttle to the whole "porn makes men evil to women" angle.
Katie could be a useful tool for the source code revision woes at work. What do ya think all?
To follow up on my last post, i just saw a link on pricewatch that has 256 megs of Mac memory for $32. Sorry, considering going from a 500 Mhz chip to a 600 Mhz chip is about $100, but QUADRUPLING by memory to insane levels is about $32..... it is so foolish for Apple to sell anything less than 256 megs of RAM in any of their products.
I know that RAM is supposed to be an upsell, but heck, why not make SURE that everyone has plenty of RAM, and upsell things like digital cameras and other accessories that *gasp* use memory.
If I didn't already have 160 megs of memory in my iMac (which, if you are not using classic, feels likea decent but not awesome amount) I would buy a big ol' 256 megs stick of RAM and have 384 megs....
A great article on why MacOSX seems slow. I gotta tell you, not just as a Mac Bigot (which I am) but also a Linux bigot (which I also am), I love MacOSX. It is WAY too cool for words. However, some operations do seem slow... I tend to avoid moving windows as much as possible.
The solution given in the article? two things: 1) Get Apple to optimize OSX (which Apple is doing and will just take time). 2) get more memory! MacOSX is very memory intensive, but is speedy when it has memory to gobble.
Which leads me to my point. Why the HELL doesn't Apple just sell 256 megs of RAM with every single machine they sell now. The system requirements for OSX is AT LEAST 128 Megs of RAM, and yet that is the base for most computers (and some actually sell with 64 megs of RAM). It is like the original iMac that required at least 40 megs of RAM to have OS8.x up *and* Netscape.... immediatelys sending anyone with only 32 megs of RAM into virual memory and feeling slow. Given opening Netscape was the primaty purpose of the machine to 99% of the people who bought it, this was unacceptable.
RAM is cheap. RAM is super cheap, and it is the most cost-effective way to make a machine feel zippy even when its processor is a little old *cough g3 cough*. Apple should base everything on having 256 megs of RAM and be done with it.
Nice little procmail tutorial.
slashdot has story that fuckedcompany is saying that VALinux, the owners of slashdot, is going to be laying people off. A comment has a link to mcdonald's career page. Oh the irony.
Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux, because it is cool and then engel doesn't have to dig up the mail from tiggersol.
GPS = Gotta Pay for Speeding
When Turner signed Acme's rental agreement last October, he didn't notice the warning at the top of the contract that read: "Vehicles in excess of posted speed limit will be charged $150 fee per occurrence. All our vehicles are GPS equipped."So now we live in a world where a Corporation can impose fines (as defined in the fine print of their User Agreement) if a user breaks the law using their product. The bitch is that the "law" is arbitrarily defined by the Corporation (i.e. they can set their threshold to consider 35MPH speeding). Bend over folks. How long before M$ teams up with the RIAA to issue end users fines if they have "illegal" media files on their PC? And don't even get me started on the ethics of tracking and recording my physical movements while in my car.
Star Wars: Episode I | DVD: The Wait is Over
On October 16, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will begin the worldwide release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace on DVD.
fozbaca.org @ ufies, looks like the switchover is almost complete. Just waiting for the last few DNS servers to update. Expect some changes how that the most gracious host, arcteerx of ufies.org, has allowed me to eat some cpu cycles, disk space and bandwidth. Thanks dude.
Cross-Site Request Forgeries CSRF, pronounced "sea surf"), or the problems of webmail and web aplications.
So what is your favorite monoplist corporationup to today, MSNBC doctors anti-MS WSJ story. Next they will be changing history.
Industrial-Strength Webcasting with mod_mp3, for a little project at work.
Note to peps, fozbaca.org is moving to a different server. Just in case things go wiggy for a day or so.
Advice on how to OpenSource your code.
If you're planning a collaborative development model, the process of preparing internal and proprietary source code for release to a community requires careful planning and thought. This is important regardless of whether the developer community is a small set of partners or the public at large. This process can be divided into three parts: planning, execution and documentation.
Alsop has refound My Old Flame: The Macintosh
The bottom line: Sure, there's pain in adopting the Mac. But if I accept that, I get to use a computer that works, and that pretty much does what I expect and want a computer to do.
TUPPERLAN! the brief recount of a geek tuperware party attended by yours truely.
Bring the Family home on DVD
It was announced this week that the complete Godfather trilogy is set for DVD release this fall. The 5-disc set includes all three movies with full audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola, and a huge suite of extras.An offer I can't refuse.
Microsoft-Free Fridays?
What if every Friday were a Microsoft-free day for the Web? You can use MSIE any day but Friday. To give something back to the Web, if you want to read my site you would have to use Mozilla, Opera, OmniWeb, Lynx -- anything but Microsoft's browser. One day a week.Bravo!!! Also a prefect rebuttle to Zeldman's upgrade to a 5.X or better browser to veiw this site.
Further, this morning we learned that there is no way for a webmaster to opt-out. A user can smart-tag all sites, rendering any (expensive) effort to opt-out of the defacement pointless.Yet another reason to put the smack down on Microsoft.
If Microsoft wants to really contribute something useful in the spirte of SmartTags why not go with the Annotea project? It is a developing annotation standard by the W3C. Some tweak of this idea should be able to provide the same functionality in a way that site creators can opt in on and others participate in without having to bow to the wills of the evil empire.
Then again maybe I'm just too much a leftist commie for a world like that.
Then again maybe I'm just too much a leftist commie for a world like that.
Gillmore has theory, Smart Tags a Surveillance Tool?
"Smart Tags", Round Two, the slashdot discussion. Favorite comment
Tivo would get the hell sued out of them for thisThe real question that so far no one has answered, what is the real Microsoft agenda with SmartTags? Somewhere in it all is a misdirect which is missing the real reason for the "feature" and allowing it to be leaked at this time. Kinda like all the recent "OpenSource is evil/cancerous/un-american" speak is really allowing Microsoft to set the agenda in the debate.
Howstuffworks had "How Gas Prices Work", all for arcterex. Check out the gas prices adjusted for inflation, $2.59 in 1980 compared to the $1.66 in 2001.
A screenshot, and the url, of a ZDNet article, still being edited, about SmartTags. Not sure if it is a joke or reality. Either way it makes a pretty good point.
My Political Compass:
Economic Left/Right: -5.92
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.75
I guess we all basically think alike :-)
My Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -5.51Could have predicted this one. According to this test, I'm a little right of Fozzy, but still firmly in the Libertarian Left. Although I couldn't help but feel like a lot of the questions were loaded.
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.49
Political Compass, one of those answer some questions and see where you are politically. Took the test and ended up with:
Economic Left/Right: -7.14More left and more libertarian than Ghandi. So now where do the rest of ya fall (hint to engel, mithrander, any kentuckians reading and the nexus cowd)?
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -8.53
Clean underwear for Disney workers
via Zgeek
"Some workers complained about receiving undergarments that were stained or smelly and Mr Steverson said there have been three cases of costumed workers at the Magic Kingdom getting pubic lice or scabies during the past two years."That's might big of Disney. Unbelievable. Is this not the 21st Century, or do we have to re-write The Jungle?
via Zgeek
Java One Day Laborers, out of work .com'rs looking for Java work. Fav "Will Code For Drugs"
Efficient Perl for the Web
This is the table of contents for my upcoming book, which will be published by New Riders in August 2001. All chapters have at least a first draft done, as indicated in the outline. The final drafts should be available on the site by the end of May.
The unofficial history of America[tm]
In the early history of America, the corporation played an important but subordinate role. The people -- not the corporations -- were in control. So what happened? How did corporations gain power and eventually start exercising more control than the individuals who created them?
Trade in/up your handheld for a Visor Edge.
Handspring, Inc. today introduced an innovative product trade-up program through which handheld computer owners can exchange almost any handheld computer for $100 toward the purchase of Handspring's slim Visor Edge from Handspring.com. In addition, customers who already own a Handspring Visor handheld can pass it on to a friend or family member and receive the same $100 to put toward a new Visor Edge.Cool. Now I can give my Visor Deluxe to my wife and get a deal on a better model for myself. Good news for us "early adopters."
The Return of Microsoft, good one by Katz
There are now real questions whether corporations like Microsoft, Disney, and AOL Time-Warner are vulnerable any longer to government regulation, or to any other kind of curb. Microsoft seems to have convincingly demonstrated that is is, in fact, above the law, and means to stay that way.
Advice in the post .com death world,
Focus on the fundamentals, look for and make a good work environment (people-wise, not furniture-wise), reasonable work weeks, get payment in something other than promises, hire/work for seasoned project managers with good people skills, help cement teams into firm social units and pride only in delivering.dotbombing - yeah! The article
cuvarack icq'd a great one today
Quote: "Code is much like elephant dung. The more code, the more bugs. You have to let it rest a while to make sure that the bugs are gone (and large heaps rot slowly)."So all you coders out there keep your dung piles small :)
Attorney Dan Ravicher on Open Source Legal Issues, he answers questions form an Ask/.
Might have found out why the net has gotten less fun, Four Companies Get Half Your Clicks. Pretty scarry thought. Like the real works a handfull of organizations are the information distributors.
Linux interviewed on NPR's FreshAir.
Sex ed does not encourage sexual activity
Sex education and other programs that tell teen-agers how to avoid pregnancy and AIDS do not encourage them to experiment and in some cases discourage it...Confirms what should be expected. Like mostl things education is the key.
peerkat
a personal syndicated data aggregator living on your computer desktop.Looks intresting. Kinda like RadioUserland's backend desktop functionality.
Done.
[13:15:09] <***@jabber> just this afternoon, I'm making a presentation of Visio capabilities here at work.
[13:15:46] <***@jabber> I'm talking to a group that includes the VP of Engineering (my boss), the CFO, CTO, Director of State Operations, and about 12 other people.
[13:16:18] <***@jabber> I need to open up a web browser to illustrate some functionality of some documents that I have published on the company's intranet site....
[13:16:57] <***@jabber> so when I open up my browser, it starts to load my home page, which is www.fozbaca.org. I try to stop it by hitting the stop button, but only succeed in stopping it AFTER it loads the background
[13:17:21] <***@jabber> so your FUCKING UGLY web cam shot gets blasted up on a 5x6 screen in front of the whole group.
[13:17:44] <***@jabber> my comment....."pay no attention to the geek up on the screen"
[13:18:51] <***@jabber> so do you think you can get rid of it now?
[13:18:44]and the comments from the peanut gallery?
[13:19:30] <***@jabber> they all just sat there dumbfounded (and probably a little nausiated) with the exception of the engineers, who laughed
[13:19:53]damm i would have loved to be a fly on the wall
