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Thursday, October 20, 2005 |
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Wednesday, October 19, 2005 |
DVD Jon is coming to America. The programming prodigy has traded the glaciers and mountains of Norway for the sunny beaches of San Diego, where he'll be working with Michael Robertson, another thorn in the side of media conglomerates. By elle.cayabyab@gmail.com (Elle Cayabyab). [Ars Technica]
That's quite brave on his part, I am sure he will be sued at some point. Can he go to jail? If it is only money he'll be allright, but if he goes to jail...
4:38:08 PM 
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I had a very high opinion of Chris Pirillo, but I gotta say his appearance in last Saturday's Inside Mac radio was a big disappointment. They talk about gada.be and that's a great service, that I think I will use a lot. But then he said a couple of things that sounded... well, stupid... First, he said that he thought charging more than 5 or 6 dollars for an armband to carry an iPod was, and I quote, "highway robbery". If he thinks he can do it for less, why doesn't he? Second, he said he doesn't have an iPod, but has a PSP. That I thought was odd... But okey, he rather play games than listening to music... But what really made him drop points with me like a stone was when he said that the iTunes Music Store has DRM, but not really, is almost like no DRM (that isn't a direct quote)... WHAT?!? I even think he was talking about videos, which is even worse. iTunes Music comes with DRM attached, but at least it can be removed by burning a CD and ripping it again. Videos can't be saved in a portable format, so you can't make backups that do not relay in a connection with the iTunes Music Store. Hence, you do not own the product, you are just renting for an indefinite amount of time. I hope it was a problem of talking faster than he thinks, but come on, Chris! Correct the last thing!
3:37:10 PM
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Tuesday, October 18, 2005 |
eMe points out that the best selling video in Apple's iTunes Music store is Everybody Hates Hugo. We can sympathize with that!
3:46:41 PM
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A poll found that President Bush's job
approval rating among African Americans was 2 percent,
plus or minus 3 percentage points.
[From Harper's Weekly]
9:05:08 AM
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Monday, October 17, 2005 |
Ask Hugo anything.
Have a question for Hugo? Something you always wanted to ask him?
Something you were always curious about? Well, here is your chance
courtesy of the BBC and Hugo's expensive imagemakers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/4350254.stm
Please, don't be shy about it and ask away! This is your chance, show the BBC, Venezuela and the world you care!
[The Devil's Excrement]
Isn't it curious that most of the comments (at this hour) are positive and not from Venezuela?
9:29:58 PM
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Sunday, October 16, 2005 |
So, the big question, does the Mac, the great graphic computer that it is, the home of the classic -- MacPaint, come with a paint program? I just want something that lets me resize graphics and type some text on them, you know the usual Scripting News type graphic illustrations. Nothing too fancy. Don't tell me I'm going to have to buy PhotoShop because that will make me angry. Make me happy and tell me there's something simple and fast already on my hard disk! Where is it? I don't need Garage Band or Dot-Mac, or any of that crap. Give me a paint program or else. Hehe. Sorry.  [Scripting News]
Hmmm... Have you heard of iPhoto? is right there in your Dock! I guess using Windows makes you... think differently. There are great programs and utilities for imaging for Mac, they are not called Paint programs anymore because that name does not reflect current reality. You can do what you want, without buying Photoshop, using GimpShop (free), Graphic Converter (cheap) or tons of other programs. The best way is to use scripts. I have two in my Finder's toolbar, Rotate and Scale by %, and I drop one o several images and they do what their name implies. They can be found out there, but if you want them let me know... I think the key here is approaching a new system by emptying your cup... If you know what I mean.
10:41:48 AM
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Formula Bullshit
F1: Alonso steers Renault to glory. World champion Fernando Alonso wins in China to help Renault claim the constructors' title. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]
What happened with Schumacher was incredible. Crashed by Albers from behind while going to the pits. Not only that commentaries try to confuse issues and assign blame to Schumacher. Rule of thumb, when someone crashes from behind it is their fault! Period. The rest is bullshit. Albers should be penalized. Rules will change again next year, Michelin is resisting the return of tyre changing. They are doing something really intelligent, claiming pit stops have nothing to do with racing and should be banned all together. It would be fun, but it was tried before. Alonso and Renault are the big winners. Next years will see the end of four teams, and there will be 6 new teams (maybe) including B teams managed by the same people. The saddest thing is Minardi, it will become Toro Rosso managed by the Red Bull team. Rumors have Raikkonnen in talks with Ferrari, I hope that is not true. Engines will get smaller... F1 made less money this year than last...
10:34:27 AM Google It!
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Saturday, October 15, 2005 |
Malblocks sad end...
If you have had the pleasure to send me email you may have noticed that my account was managed by mailblocks, with a test to see if the email was from a real human. Yesterday I I can't say I was surprised of Mailblocks sad end, they call it transition, I did predicted its demised, albeit much earlier. To my amazement mailblocks survived for a lot of years. But there was a surprised left. I payed a very small amount to mailblocks very early on, they had a deal that that got you double what normally would have, that was more than two years ago. Now they say I am entitled to a refund. I decided not to transition to the new service because the announcement is so unclear, it makes clear they are not going to make that work either. Now, I am in the market for another challenge-response spam blocker... Any advice?
12:36:13 PM Google It!
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Beatles named 'icons of century'. The Beatles beat Louis Armstrong and Lucille Ball to be named icons of the century in magazine Variety. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]
The Beatles beat everybody, Mickey Mouse beats Elvis Presley but nor Marylin Monroe. I think it is a sign of our times that Lucille Ball (number 3) and Marilyn Monroe (number 8) are the only women on the list...
9:59:17 AM
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Friday, October 14, 2005 |
Radio Hell or why Userland sucks
By the way, I still think that Radio sucks and it's buggy as hell. But I'd be willing to live with that. But the support is incredible unresponsive. Have you read the comments about Dell Hell? Dell was slammed for not responding to blogs. Well, I am in Radio Hell and Userland, a blog company (don't need a mitt to catch that irony), hasn't responded at all. Userland has robed me of my legacy on the web, of my position in Google. My old site is garbage and they have refused to provide me a way to update it correctly. Of course, Userland is no longer the same company I bought from... I have demanded a refund, they, of course, have not responded...
6:05:19 PM Google It!
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The protests against columbus day parade compound an interesting commentary on how the neo constructionist post modernism manages to avoid criticizing its own society. Instead of moving against british imperialism or against rosy pictures like Thanksgiving, it moves against Colombus, an italian that never set foot in the US. Colombus was a man of his time and an impressive historic figure, despite its faults. Yes, latinamerica has some claim for hating Colombus, because they were colonized mostly by Colombus spanish followers, though figures like Cortez deserve the hatred more. But the US indigenous people should aim its anger at British colonialism. Funny how the descendants of such colonialism lead the movement and avoid the blame... By punishing an italian spanish descendants, like Chavez, can also play the same game...
12:12:56 PM
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Keep the Internet Free!
Please, Keep the Internet Free!. A group of countries, including Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Venezuela, want to wrestle control of the root servers away from the US. From the article: This worldwide web of tyrannies, hiding behind the veneer of technical complaints, now seeks to control not just what its own citizens are able to see and say on the Internet, but what every individual on the face of the planet is able to see and say.
With all its defect the US has a better tradition of upholding freedom than any of these countries. If they manage to wrestle control, a rogue internet will be created for freedom, but it will be harder to access. I hope the US stands fast on this one. Let those countries break away from the Internet, they don't have the content we want!
10:55:32 AM Google It!
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Good news: I may be dumb, but Radio is dumber
I think I have solved one of my problems with Radio. If you see this post is because my uploading problems seem to be over. At first I thought it was all my fault. You see, I had tested my FTP server, but I normally use SFTP (FTP through an SSH tunnel), now the difference when you use FTP in a local machine (or through) an FTP tunnel is that you are not going to the special directory FTPRoot, but to your normal directory structure. FTPRoot makes the connecting machine think it is the root of your server, that way you can share what you want and protect the rest. Now, I wasn't using FTPRoot before, I made the change when I move to Mac OS X Server. I tried using FTP and what do you know! It wouldn't upload! I swallowed hard. If this turned out to be my fault, the Userland support guys would hit me hard... But after a few experiments I found out Radio still at least shares part of the blame. It turns out that if you ask Radio to upload a file to /Library/WebServer/Documents It will ignore a link called Library and since it can't create a Library folder, it will create a WebServer folder... If you create a WebServer link pointing to the right place, it will ignore that and create a Documents folder. Hence, Radio was uploading the files, but to the wrong folder! Creating a Documents Link pointing to the right place, seem to have solved the problem.
The problem in my weblogs.com hosted site persist. If I try to upload the whole site Radio creates a weird version of my site, not only with an old look (I wouldn't mind that), but pointing to www.octavio.net and with the home page from that site. I have no idea why it does that and how to solve it. But right now if support can just get me a way to upload my real rendered files to that location, I may just keep using Radio (I will update the look of my site, though).
10:22:42 AM Google It!
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© Copyleft 2005 Alfredo Octavio.
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