Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, November 21, 2002

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Putting your life online: "Soon you could have an electronic store for all your long-term memories. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY] Why don't these Microsoft schmucks get a clue about weblogs? You know how many people have called their weblog their "backup brain?" Did Microsoft spend $20-30 m to figure this out? Ooosh. Video and audio publishing via weblogs is comming soon, as well as an advanced OS enabled interface, and it won't come from Microsoft...." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

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John Robb's Radio Weblog writes: "The cowgirl contemplates TV life at the expense of a pure existance via a weblog. All the best to her. Hmmm. If a weblog can get you a TV show, why are so many people stymied on the sidelines? My advice: find a topic, blog it, own it."

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John Robb's Radio Weblog writes: "MIT wants to build a super database for research papers. Earth to MIT, give everyone a Radio weblog. Let them post notes and documents to an Intranet. Get Google's search appliance and convert all of the documents to HTML. Save yourself a bundle, let alone the revenue producing discussions open access to a browsable archive would enable. Geeze. Lead a horse to water, that's schooled in big cos logic and they will inevitably die of thirst (it is going to be amazing what the pinheads come up with to refute this)."

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Stores unite to make DMCA look stupid: "Four major US retailers have thrown their weight behind the anti-DMCA campaign by making it look ridiculous. The bargain hunter site FatWallet.com has been given notices under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act by WalMart, Target, Best Buy..." [Google Technology News]

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The State of the RSS Address points to Timothy Appnel at O'Reilly Web Services DevCenter: "[He] ponders the current (poor) state of RSS feed quality. He covers some basics about RSS as well as things that can be done to improve its effectiveness." [Matt Croydon::postneo]

Could Microsoft save (or lose) your life? -- Comment()
Microsoft plans online life archive: "Microsoft researchers are working to create an electronic store for all your memories that could be as easy to search as Google." [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]

Run a screensaver as you desktop background on Mac OS X -- Comment()
You can run a screensaver as a background image of your desktop in Mac OS X. I tried this with the Marine Aquarium screensaver, and it works beautifylly! (At least on the the 1 GHz PowerBook G4.) The desktop can be a bit distracting, though.

Running the Marine Aquarium screensaver as background with the max number of fish seems to take about 50% of the cpu capacity, so this is probly not a good idea while doing some cpu-intensive work on the PowerBook. Running a built-in screensaver as background, for example Beach or Forest, takes only a few percent of the cpu capacity (2-6%).

By the way, when using Marine Aquarium as the screensaver (with other application running) on my 600 MHz iBook I get about 10 frames per second. On the 1 GHz PowerBook G4 I get 60-90 frames per second.

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Personal privacy takes alarming hit, critics say: "Civil libertarians warned Tuesday that the homeland security bill passed by Congress, taken in context with already broadened surveillance powers and new database technology, represented an unprecedented threat to personal privacy." [Google Technology News]

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Microsoft Customers Cope With More Security Vulnerabilities: "Vendor says flaw could let attackers gain control or run code on vulnerable systems, posing a risk to millions of Web servers and Internet Explorer users." [Google Technology News]

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Spam via Referer log: "I've read about it and now I've experienced it myself. I got hit by nasty referer log porn spam today. I just checked a couple blogs over at FreeRoller and they got hit by the very same thing. [...] It does not appear to be a one time thing, the hits are still coming in from the spam machine. What a drag. If this continues throughout the day, I'll be taking the referer log off of my page template. What a drag." [Blogging Roller]

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Parsing Protein Domains with Perl. "James Tisdall, author of the O'Reilly & Associates book Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics, shows biologists with or without programming experiece how to use Perl to apply the power of bioinformatics to biological research." [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

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RDF, What's It Good For?: "Kendall Grant Clark ponders the hidden benefits of RDF, and examines the XML-DEV community response to a recent XML.com article on making XML documents RDF-friendly." [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

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Chris Pirillo says that Linux is ugly: "Um, let's see. Linux copies Microsoft which copied Apple which copied Xerox. I guess when you copy UI's too much they get ugly. It is amazing, though. Three years ago I was signing Apple's death certificate. Jobs brought them back to be a serious competitor to Microsoft again in a lot of markets (although Jobs still hasn't convinced IT types like my brother that they Macs are safe to buy in large for enterprises). What I thought would happen is that Linux would have taken market share away from Microsoft on the desktop. That simply hasn't happened. Instead, it's become cool to own a Macintosh again. Hmmm." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

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Here is recommended reading list based on the links on this weblog. This Newdoor tool was developed by Mark Pilgrim. Nice work!

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Cellular Automata seem to be in. Thus the name of this weblog is hot for the moment. (See details.) Radical physicist flatters computer fans: "Stephen Wolfram takes the stage at Comdex, evangelizing a computing-centric view of the universe that might sit better with the tech industry than it has with other audiences." [CNET News.com]

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'Critical' Windows, IE Hole Plugged: "Microsoft has issued a software patch for what it described as a "critical" new security vulnerability affecting most versions of Windows and certain versions of the Internet Explorer Web browser." [Google Technology News]

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U of Colorado installs Xserve cluster: "The University of Colorado has installed a new thirty-node Xserve cluster for use by its biology department. The cluster, which was underwritten by a grant from the National Science Foundation runs Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft." [The Macintosh News Network]

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Mobile phone alliance marches ahead: "A wireless alliance of companies led by Microsoft and Nokia is continuing to absorb smaller industry groups and expects to garner even more support by year's end." [Google Technology News]

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Quit stuck programs without a visible Force Quit box: "You know that you can force quit frozen applications or games by pressing Apple (Command) plus Option plus Escape, and the Force Quit window will show up, allowing you to force quit the frozen application. But in some frozen applications and games, the Force Quit window won't show up. It makes you think the whole system has crashed. Most of the times, though, it hasn't. [...] Here is what you do before you press reset button; hold down Apple (Command) and Option and Escape, then just hit Enter. You might have to hit Enter twice in some crashes." [Mac OS X Hints]

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gridMathematica offers parallel computing solution: "Wolfram Research has released gridMathematic, a parallel computing solution for dedicated grids or clusters. It can run on any cluster of machines including Mac OS X, Unix, Linux and Windows via TCP/IP connectivity." [MacCentral]

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I added some details to the review of the 1 GHz PowerBook G4: comments about the fan noise, and experiences of attaching an external FireWire hard disk to the PowerBook.