numbersix

great to see Jeff Minter back again, his web log is worth a read

went to a lecture by Eric Raymond last night. amazing guy, 2 hours only seemed enough to scratch the surface of the whole subject.

Windows started life as QDOS, Quick and Dirty Operating System. now it isn't even quick.

i hate spam

the seven layers of the OSI model -

Application
Presentation
Session
Transport
Network
Data
Link
Physical.

so there you go.

'There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary, and those who don't'

if you're reading about a piece of software and there is no mention of what OS it runs under, it will always be windows. the arrogance.

24/7/365? no! 24/7/52!

learning awk. neat :) produce an average idle time from captured output of a solaris vmstat:
grep -v swap vmstat.txt | grep -v memory | awk '{s += $22} END { print 'sum-',s,' avg-',s/NR}'

when will the female fashion world wake up to the wonders of pockets in trousers?

example of adding static routes to BSD in rc.conf :

static_routes='inside'
route_inside='10.10.10.0 172.10.1.1'

phrases that should be banned for the good of mankind, #243 - 'Gift Basket'. also, incidentally a phrase that, if found in an email subject line will guarentee that mail as being spam.

just read a very interesting article in the Guardian on the rise of the mobile phone.

finally decided that Empire will not be getting their monthly 3.50 from me any more. the magazine was never the most cerebral of reads, but over the last year it has plunged new depths. they are overly obsessed with the commercial aspects of the industry, anything that isn't a blockbuster is just ignored. even the films they do turn their attention to are just superficially skimmed. the recent editorial summed it up for me perfectly, the whole shpiel on Spiderman being the most influencial film of the year - bollocks! it was rubbish, a painting by numbers, brain dead attempt at something that had so much potential. anyone with half decent directorial skills could have turned that out. and the CGI was terrible, they even admitted as much themselves in the previous issue. and what is this obsession with DVD? Ok so the quality is better, but does it warrent 50% of the magazine's content, no! if i want DVD monthly i'll go and buy it.

so how about some logic in the web browser to spot URLs that haven't been made into links, and do so. for instance this : http://www.numbersix.net would be changed into this : http://www.numbersix.net. i see this so often, either people not bothering in their HTML, or text that has been taken from some other format and not fully marked up. i think i'll suggest it to the Chimera developers.

interesting interview with Bill Gates a few years ago on the subject of the quality of his software. MS are clearly very un-interested in the quality of their products compared to the amount of money they can make. would you choose to be rich if it meant substantially reducing the quality of your product? not me. seems these days i'm in a minority.

have you ever wondered how much a film actually costs to make? these guys are almost finished making a full feature film on a budget 335,000 pounds, and have a very interesting web site explaining how they did it.

Interesting guy, I must get hold of some of his writing.

Reduce the amount of rubbish that comes through your postbox thusly :

- Register with the Mailing Preference Service. This little known organisation controls most of the direct marketing mail you get through your door. Of course in an ideal world you would have to register to GET the stuff, but hey, that's capitalism for you.

- Let your bank/building society/utility/etc know that you're not interested. All it needs is a quick phone call and you'll then only get the important stuff.

one of the most shocking, and sickening parts of this attack (for such a one sided, unprovoked conflict can hardly be termed a 'war') on Iraq is the twisted reporting of it by the military, the politicians and the media. it is becoming impossible to tell what is actually happening on the ground, impossible to disect the fact from the propaganda. there really are two realities now, the reality that sells newspapers, and the reality in which people's lives are literally being torn apart.

Robert Fisk's is one of the few voices in this frenzy that speaks clearly. This article in the Independent made me ashamed to be British, ashamed to be a part of this sick, stupid, waste.

what have these people done to us to deserve what we are doing to them? if they didn't hate us before, they can but do so now.

Find out who built the device with that MAC address : www.coffer.com/mac_find

Disable (and I suppose re-enable) STOP-A mechanism on a Sun/Solaris machine - http://www.netsys.com/sunmgr/1999-04/msg00041.html

The Independent has a chilling report on John Simpson's almost fatal friendly fire experience. I find it very difficult to understand how so much money is ploughed in to building these weapons and yet such a high percentage of situations like this still happen. The US made a lot of noise about how much more advanced their technology is since '91. Really? I'm wondering what criteria they are using to make such a statement.

The invasion of Iraq isn't even over yet but the Sun newspaper has already relegated it to page 8 of todays paper in favour of various celebrity stories. And this the largest selling newspaper in the UK.

Check out British Sea Power if you get a chance. Their live gigs are chaotic to say the least.

Why oh why do PCs ignore a keyboard that has been unplugged/plugged back in? And if that's not enough, if I dare to power the machine on without a keyboard why the hell can't I then subsequently plub one in and expect it to work? Why?

At last, instructions for ordering 100lbs (or more) of Silly Putty. My plan for world domination is finally achievable.

London transport have recently introduced the Oyster smart card which tracks and records your movements.

I didn't know this, but apparently British law states that mobile phone companies have to keep a record of your movements based on the cells into which your phone has moved.

Tescos has been trialing smart tags, devices that can be hidden in shop bought products and later remotely scanned for a unique number. This number can be cross referenced against the details taken from you when you paid for the item (with credit card of course). The upshot is that someone only has to be within 20 meters of you to find out who you are, and all your shopping habbits.

If you add London's extensive CCTV coverage to this equation, the technology is there to track you whereever you go in most of the UK.

Also in the news this week has been David Blunket's proposals for a national ID card system, an non-compulsary system which looks like it will become very inconvenient to avoid.

The phrase 'thin end of the wedge' spings to mind. Where will all this lead? The companies and organisations introducing this technology state that the information will only be used for benign purposes, or when crimes are being commited. But a) we only have their word for it, and b) things change. Information is the new commodity.

I spend a large portion of my life immersed in technology. I am fascinated by it, hell I earn my living from this fascination. But paradoxically I also find myself becoming more frightened of it at the same time. Maybe knowing intimately what can be done with it makes me more aware of how it can be abused.

Found out today that Shaggy from Scooby Doo's real name is Norville Rogers. The guy that did (does?) his voice is Kasey Casem who has done loads of other stuff. I'm sure I know that name from somewhere?

Me to hardware shop employee - "Do you have anything that will get rid of moths?"
Him, after much sucking of teeth - "Mmmmmmmm, no I don't think we do, but this Anti-Moth might help"

WTF?

I was going to write an entry about the ridiculously named 'Boswelox', Loreal's new anti-wrinkle technology, but I see Being Arsed has done an excellent job already. What utter nonsense.

Buying lunch today in a reasonably well known chain of cafes -

Me - Just give me one (plastic) fork, I don't need a separate one for the fruit salad
Guy - Are you sure?
Me - Yeah, means less waste
Guy - Oh that's ok, we have tons of them!

....I was thinking on a slightly larger scale, but never mind...

I've never liked clowns, this just confirms my suspicion of them. Very well done though, sort of Hunter S Thomson meets Billy Smart.

Interesting article(by Ralf S. Engelschall no less) on GEOM, a FreeBSD software RAID mechanism. Looking forward to trying this on my new server.

Some photos I've taken of Graffiti in Geneva

I have long been convinced that although Microsoft go on about innovation being one of their main strengths, they actually release very little that is actually innovative. Most of their big sellers are based on other people's work, either bought or just plain copied. This is a nice summary of the true origins of a lot of their products - http://www.mcmillan.cx/innovation.html

An other list : http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.shtml