Electronic Frontier Foundation: FairPlay: Another Anticompetitive Use of DRM This is a must read mini-piece on Apple’s use of Fairplay DRM to protect their music store investment from other player manufacturers.
Fox News: Al Qaeda Increasing in Strength. This is scary stuff. For all of you who have told me that I should vote for Bush because of security matters, and there have been a few of you, in what way has he managed to deplete this threat? It seems like, by invading Iraq, he has made this threat worse.
The easiest to understand set of instructions for protecting your Mac OS X machine from the much discussed, but seldom understood, security issue.
This weekend, I read Calm Surrender: Walking the Hard Road of Forgiveness by Kent Nerburn. It’s more of a book of observations about forgiveness, its nature, its role in our lives, and attaining the balance to live with it, than a how-to guide of some sort. These sorts of books seem to be more effective for people of my nature. There is a chapter of the book up on his site if you want to give it a test drive. I really enjoyed the book, and I think it had a good impact on me. It remains to be seen whether that impact is fleeting or if I can make more meaningful change in my demeanor.
Imagine my surprise, after enjoying the book and thinking that I might want to read additional titles by Kent Nerburn, to discover, via the almighty G, of course, that Kent Nerburn has a blog, with an RSS feed and everything.
I have to admit that I obsess a bit more than I should about the cases and bags that I carry my gear in on a day to day basis. Last week, in some surfing, I was really impreseed with Vaja’s cellphone cases. Today, iPodlounge reviews their iPod case which looks both lovely and functional. I gotta curb my spending though, so I can afford all that work on the house I have started.
Tim Buntel’s Long Overdue and Reluctantly Agreed-to Blackstone Blog (It’s a ColdFusion thing, so you know.)
Well, last week saw the launch of a new set of software that I wrote, and this software was a substantially refactored version of some software that I wrote last year. I, apparently, was much dumber last year, because I am generating the same result with my software as the set of components I wrote a year ago, but the new version is something like 2200 lines of code shorter. Anyway, I spent a good chunk of my weekend overseeing the live burn-in of that software, fixing some minor bugs that cropped up, and generating a punchlist for some improvements. All fun, and fun to cross a big project off my to do list.
Unfortunately, the end of that project coincides with the true beginning of our busy season. We have our first major event of the season this week. If I remember last year correctly, everything from this event forward is a blur of work.
I really do not know the first thing about software development Someday, maybe I will. I am trying very hard to learn.
Engadget: Real photo of the new Sidekick!
The Yankees beat the Angels last night to go a half game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East. Since the Sox swept the Yankees at home in April, the Yanks have won seven straight series now.
There have been quite a few sites yesterday and today linking to this Sacramento Bee interview with an ex-Marine who was in Iraq. I read the interview last night, and there is one section that made me a little nervous. The interviewer asks what an ICBM is after the Marine says that “I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.” The marine answers that an ICBM is “a multi-purpose cluster bomb.” I always thought that an ICBM was a missile, so I went a searching. I could find no reference at all to a cluster bomb by this name. I sent an email off to the reporter who did the interview last night but haven’t heard back yet. Am I wrong? Here is one of the several comprehensive listings of American cluster armaments that I found online. Update: I just got an email from the interviewer letting me know that this was an error and that it is being corrected now.
More about NetNewsWire 2.0: “It will be a free upgrade for 1.x users. If you bought (or if you buy) NetNewsWire 1.x, all 2.x versions will be free. We won’t do this for every major upgrade, but we’re doing it this time.” No mention specifically about what new functionality is in this version.
As this year progresses, the political humor gets better and better. This defective yeti piece is absolutely hilarious, regardless of your political orientation. The Daily Show has been just great, and I don’t use that term as lightly as you might think, every time I have seen it in the last month.
This year’s Screen on the Green schedule looks delightful. Who could resist Young Frankenstein, a blanket and a couple of bottles of wine under the stars? Not to mention the expected fun and mirth of a mid-town crowd for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Finally, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda introducing Barefoot in the Park? I will be there, in the park, and also barefoot.
Leo says goodbye to Call for Help and Tech TV. I’m interested to see what the new channel, the ineptly named G4TechTv, has to offer, what it’s vision is, and what the quality level of the programming will be. I know that there was a huge difference, in my opinion, between the level of the existing TechTV, which was polished and informative, and G4, which has this sort of amateurish feel to it. I had watched both prior to this merger, so I don’t believe that I am biased in my thinking.
Mac OS X: Highly critical security flaw Mac users take note! It is easily fixed by changing some settings. (Solution is in the comments of that post.)
According to the blueprint, Arrested Development, my favorite new show of this last television season, will be back next year. I hope they have the good sense to move it to a different night. (via)
NBC Fall Lineup announced. Two more years of Scrubs!! That is good news for those of us who enjoy that particular comedy. They are adding a fourth Law and Order show. Between the three CSI’s and the four Law and Orders, you could start a network that ran nothing but law enforcement dramas.
BugMeNot.com is a site that lets you bypass annoying sites that force you to register to view content. (via)
RipDigital and MusicRip are two examples of companies that will take your CD collection and rip it for you at about a dollar a disk. I’ve got a lot of music, and I don’t think I really want to spend the kind of money I would have to to get everything ripped. I, however, am thinking about choosing about 200 disks that I really want ripped and sending them off. It would probably take me a weekend to rip 200 disks myself, adding the time it takes to check the meta-data that the CDDB returns, which, for a lot of the stuff I listen to, is somewhat wrong. Anyone used either of these services, or know of any that are better? Let me know in the comments, I guess.
There is a very in-depth article on testing page load speed posted over at Surfin' Safari.
I had almost forgotten somehow that I can post here from my sidekick. I ended up getting a replacement Sidekick instead of going with the Treo 600. My existing Sidekick, the black and white model, had battery issues, and the battery in it is not user replaceable.