More wonderful patent insanity
Link: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/music/0,72785-0.html?tw=rss.index
I'm going to preface this thing with the "IANAL" disclaimer.
I wouldn't normally defend Microsoft but this latest suit against them by Alcatel-Lucent just seems wrong. The summary of the Wired story is that Microsoft violated AL's patent around MP3 encoding and has been fined $1.5 billion for it.
People are still falling for the 419 scam
Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/25/treasurer_accused/
This simply amazes me. How can anyone been so utterly daft as to fall for the old Nigerian money laundering scam? I could kinda see it when the internet was new and people were unfamiliar with the old mail version of it, but this is getting ridiculous. Every week there seems to be another report of someone who should know better getting caught up in one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Sometimes I weep for humanity's greed and gullibility 'cause this doesn't work unless both of them are present.
I'm going to need the version pretending to be the VMS Reference library
Link is to some bookshelf speakers pretending to be books. Alas, waaaay too small for my needs. Wonder if they sound "wooden"? Ah, I kill meself.
(Via Gizmodo)
Another reason I'm not moving to Vista
I don't get Microsoft. Most companies would be looking for a way to persuade more people to use their product. Not Microsoft though who are busily giving people reasons not to use their latest and greatest. I guess the only real explanation is that they're happy with the market-share they have (i.e. most of it) and see no reason to be greedy for more.
Subtle change to Firefox 2
Link: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
I've only just upgraded to Firefox 2 so hadn't noticed this before: there's now a built in spell-checker in the edit gadget. It uses the red underline method of indicating there's a word it's not sure about.
Most excellent!
Synergy2 Desktop
Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2/
Truly the internet is a wonderful place; if you have a need, there's probably someone out there with just the thing to resolve it. Sometimes it's even free. Such is the case with Synergy2.
Floppy disk, we salute you
Link: http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/01/30/floppy_disks_get_the_chop_rip.html
...even though you were unreliable, slow, and, at least initially, flipping expensive.
Also on a retro-computing note, here's a 56k modem emulation.
(Via Wired's GadgetLab)
"Silly English Knnnnniiiiiggits!"
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfNfDiqAF9Q
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" meets Christopher Ecclestone era "Dr Who" and it works. Who knew?
(Via BoingBoing)
Today's self-referential post: Ritchie is melancholy and socially withdrawn
Link: http://www.blogscanada.ca/egroup/CommentView.aspx?guid=63ef5857-e166-442d-be77-e5bba20e7644
Dr. Michael Keren, a University of Calgary professor, has written a book where the thesis -- at least based on the published synopsis -- is that bloggers are a bunch of loner weenies (keep in mind I'm paraphrasing this a bit.) And, yup, he even manages a slam against cat-blogging in the press release.
Money quote from that press release:
Comparing bloggers to terrorists, Keren writes...
Seriously? How hard is he trying to sell this thing? That's like saying "Comparing income trust accountants to terrorists" or "Comparing surburban housewives to terrorists"; it's an attempt to link two utterly disparate groups in order to gain attention.
Oh well, I guess next up he'll accuse conservatives of being mean, liberals of being woollyheaded and Canadians of being anti-American. Could even go so far as to refer to artists as flakey, lawyers as greedy and jocks as dumb.
Sterotypes and far-reaching comparisons are entertaining but they're not terribly useful.
(Via POGGe)
A USB hub to die for...
Link: http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=1713
Sometimes the geek in me cannot be restrained. This has to be one of the best USB hubs I've seen yet.
As the spam turns...
We just got what appears to be our first denial of service attack today. Alas, we feel insulted: a mere 3700 hits in half an hour from distributed IPs.
More seriously, I have no idea why. This accomplished nothing. It's nowhere near enough to take out Nimblebrain. It wasn't sustained nor was did it involve enough simultaneous hits. I did get some spamverts sent via the blog mail system but that's about it.
The best I can think of is that some wannabe with a kiddie-script botnet decided to play with his new toy, but isn't all that clear on how it works.
Anyway, Ritchie's been IP banning so that should be it until the next round.
Behind Apple's pay-to-play pre-N driver
Link: http://mjtsai.com/blog/2007/01/16/buy-base-station-to-get-software-update/
Apple recently released their new version of the Airport base station with 802.11 pre-N support. There's nothing particularly special but what has got a lot of people annoyed is that Apple has also been including 802.11 pre-N hardware in their revised laptops released prior to the Airport. However, in order to activate the pre-N functionality, Apple is requiring a payment for the new driver.
Sounds really cheap on Apple's part, right?
"There're Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow...
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe4WA58rMu0&eurl=
I could be wrong, but I believe this is probably the first time "Star Trek" (as opposed to "Star Wars") has been referenced on the floor of the American House of Representatives.
It's a sort of milestone I suppose.
(Update 2007/01/25: My mistake; it wasn't the Senate; now corrected.)
