I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Chuck Palhniuk’s Choke on Saturday. Both books were really good and worth your reading time. American Gods is a more substantial book fraught with nuances that I will go back and re-explore. Choke was amusing, while not nearly as ground breaking as Fight Club, it was certainly amusing and inventive in a twisted way that is in line with Fight Club’s general principles.
Dis adding video game, DVD to ‘Tron’ revival mix Yeah, bring me back some of that Tron!!
Reconsidering the Privacy of Office Computers. His logic seems to make good sense. In the work environments where I have been privvy to the inner workings of IT, no one has really had the time or energy to monitor people’s email or Web surfing habits.
So I’ve been testing out Windows XP RC1 on the system at home I like to call “freak”. It started out as an HP desktop about two years ago, but it doesn’t resemble the machine it once was. In fact, the HP restore disks no longer recognize it as an HP, which has led to ocassional issues in installing software. Prior to installing XP on the system, I had 2000 Professional on the machine. Everything worked, and worked smoothly. So my expectations were that everything device wise would continue to work after the upgrade. Boy was I mistaken.
I should note that I'm something of an idiot. You probably know this if you have read this site on a regular basis or have met me in person, but rest assured that I'm not exaggerating a bit when I say that. I didn't read the install notes, I just burned a CD of RC1 and began my install. If I had read them, I would have noted that installing XP over Windows 2000 is an irreversible process. You can't go back without starting over from scratch.
So I installed. At first, everything seemed normal, then I noticed that my sound card, which is the newest component in my machine, wasn't working. After some surfing and a couple of emails, it was clear that the card wasn't going to work for at least a month. Then, suddenly, the ethernet card, the second newest component, stopped working altogether. Haven't been able to figure that one out yet. So that hampers my use of the machine a little. Then blue screen of death, blue screen of death, blue screen of death. Then constant rebooting without my interference. So now I'm debating whether I should make the huge migration back to Windows 2000 or wait for RC2 and the component vendors to release drivers and see if I can salvage things from where they are. It's a good thing that this machine is more of a test bed for me than a machine I actually do work on.(I was saying the same thing late last year when I installed the Mac OS X beta.) Developing a working operating system is not an easy task.
Radiohead: Creatively Nourished by a Steady Diet of Macintosh (via Exitwound)
Today’s laptop update: I received a battered COD package this morning, and after paying the substantial fee, I unpacked a battered and beaten G4 Powerbook that is clearly mine. My data has returned, and I am now much more scared that someone else had access to all of it than I was previously. One twist I hadn’t expected was that someone who knew Mac OS X well used the laptop while it was gone. Many settings were changed, things were moved around, and most of my customizations to the system were removed. This incident renews my faith in humans somewhat.
Fault-Tolerant File Storage. An interesting concept, which takes a peer to peer approach to file backup and storage.
Great article that clearly outlines why Apache ends up being a more secure Web server choice than IIS. At the bottom of the article, courtesy of ZDNet, you can also get the latest prices for Apache:-)
A list of the Starbucks locations that currently offer Wireless Internet access(802.11b). According to this page, Atlanta will soon be joining the list. Will I ever leave Starbucks again?
A new Huey Lewis and the News CD? I thought I would never see the day:-)
Things here seem to be getting crazier by the day. I finally got to the contract stage with the house I was offering on for the last two weeks, so that is getting hectic quick. Inspection tomorrow, and then things start to get even more stressful. At the same time, my stolen laptop reared it’s head this afternoon in the form of someone who bought the Powerbook G4 at a tag sale for $500, then got suspicious later. I got a call out of the blue asking me about it, and I may be receiving it in the mail on Wednesday. Or maybe not. In related news, California law states that a hotel may only be responsible for a maximum of $250 for each bag stolen from a room. That’s a great law for us business travelers huh?
Agitprop: All about text styling on the Web (via Web Graphics)
OpenSource Directory: OSD / XML dump You can now download the OSD in XML format. This has some very interesting potential.
It’s true, it’s all true. I do miss Kozmo for the exact reasons that they mention in this article: it was a symbol of an easier to manage life.
Here’s some Stinger screenshots.
Microsoft hopes to create buzz for Stinger. In the article, a Jupiter analyst points out that Microsoft would have had a better chance of getting market penetration by partnering with Nokia, Motorola, or Ericsson. I’ll point out right now that, by partnering with a smaller company, Microsoft will have more control, and probably more access to profit. Finally, they will be in a position to actually buy the company outright at some point. They like to be in control of the situation.
COLD FUSION Job Bank (hint hint)
Apple Previews Next Version of Mac OS X. If this press release is accurate, and the only way for current Mac OS X users to get the update to 10.1 is for $19.95, I imagine that there will be some angry people in the Mac camp.
The Standard: Broadband Could Add $500 Billion to Economy, Study Says It’s this sort of very misleading projecting that caused the dot bomb boom.
Man am I ticked off at Sony right now. I bought a Sony laptop a couple of weeks ago to have a machine to use until I can replace my Powerbook. I made sure to buy a model that ships with either ME or 2000 for compatibility purposes. Since the store did not have the Windows 2000 version in stock, I went ahead and bought the ME version, knowing that I had an extra Windows 2000 license at home that I could use to upgrade the machine. Since there is a version that ships with Windows 2000 drivers, I figured that I could either download the drivers I would need or have Sony send me the drivers CD for the machine. Turns out that neither are available right now, and they can’t give me a date when they will be. I’m stuck with crappy unstable Windows ME, and very unhappy with Sony. I wouldn’t buy this machine if I had it to do again, and I may just go ahead and return it. God I sound like a Whiner.