“C-net’s News.com”:http://news.com.com/Microsoft+meets+the+hackers/2009-1002_3-5747813.html?tag=nefd.lede has an article about how “Microsoft”:http://www.microsoft.com apparently had a conference where they invited ‘hackers’ to help them discover security flaws. My first and humongous beef with the article is the usage of the term ‘hacker’; but that’s a whole ‘nother issue for a whole other day. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently installed “Fedora Core 3”:http://fedora.redhat.com on my home PC to replace my old “Red Hat 9”:http://www.redhat.com and was over all impressed with the installation experience. The machine has been running well since, though I haven’t been doing anything extraordinary with it. I wanted to get “Debian”:http://www.debian.org but couldn’t spare the time for a proper custom installation.
All the time I was preparing to install, I knew FC4 was coming out soon- but I stuck with FC3 just because I knew I would never get around to it if I waited. And then I would have been stuck with RH9 still. And then where would I be. So with much fuss and ado “Fedora Core 4”:http://fedora.redhat.com has been released today to the general public; it’s a really good “Linux”:http://www.kernel.org distribution- especially for those who aren’t familiar with Linux (general public), or don’t have time to mess with bits in a more traditional distro (that would be me). I will soon write a full length article regarding my decision to use Fedora at home (pros, cons, other alternatives). Also, if and when I get around to it- my experiences with upgrading to FC4
P.S. “Here’s an easy way”:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq to upgrade from FC* to FC4 using Yum.
A few weeks ago “Wordlog.com”:http://www.wordlog.com put out a “request to all it’s readers”:http://wordlog.com/archives/2005/05/19/help-needed-with-google/ soliciting help to get listed on Google. This is a legitimate, popular and very useful (bloggers: it’s a must-bookmark) site for “WordPress”:http://www.wordpress.org users and it was a shame that it hadn’t been indexed by “Google”:http://www.google.com in it’s 1+ year of existence. “This web site”:http://scienceaddiction.com” has been up less than a week and it already has been indexed; “albeit erroneously”:http://www.google.com/search?q=scienceaddiction.com&hl=en. Now after weeks of suggestions, following through on superstitions and some fan action (including a message from yours truly to google about the travesty) “wordlog.com”:http://www.wordlog.com is finally “listed in google”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=site:wordlog.com a total of 300 times “thanks to a well put together letter by wordlog’s Carthik Sharma”:http://wordlog.com/archives/2005/06/12/now-in-google/. He wrote a letter to Google and it paid off! “Some of the suggestions”:http://wordlog.com/archives/2005/05/19/help-needed-with-google/ he got are ludicrous but others are actually useful for people looking to get listed in Google. In my experience, the best way (unless you are as unlucky as wordlog) is to get linked from multiple reputable locations.
While I may be biased to certain sciences and am no longer unfamiliar with the sciences I love, I still do pick up the all-encompassing science books for ‘the rest of us’- i.e. people who do not have Ph.D.s in the subject of the book. I do plan on getting a Ph.D. in something sooner or later- unfortunately I will not have the time or the inclination to get one in all the subjects I love. Read the rest of this entry »
By way of “GalaxyFarAway.com”:http://www.galaxyfaraway.com/gfa we have a story from “the desk of Ghent”:http://blogs.starwars.com/ghent where the blogger’s 7-year old son has some fresh perspective on the original Star Wars trilogy having watched the prequels first! The “story”:http://blogs.starwars.com/ghent/15 has a lot of interesting observations that definitely didn’t cross anyone’s mind in ’77 least of all mine because I was -2.
The new Dave Matthews CD, Stand Up (which I, admittedly, will buy at some point) apparently has some new fangled copy protection in place to prevent kiddies from making MP3s off them. According to the FAQ on SunnCom’s (the company responsible for this technology) web site:
…similar to other software and games, usage of the CD on your computer does require your acceptance of the end user license agreement and installation of specific software contained on the CD. It also requires your computer to be appropriately configured. Please review the Systems Requirements documented on the package of the CD you are trying to play.
The key quote on this page is that you cannot (so they say) copy it on to an iPod because “Apple’s proprietary technology doesn’t support secure music formats”. However, they fail the 12-year-old-boy test as described in this Playlist article. From the article:
It’s a fact. Boys are their most wily just before the onset of puberty. They’ve got all their faculties, have no notion of property rights, and—unlike males from 13-‘til-death—are not governed by their hormones. There’s nothing a 12 year old boy likes better than taking apart that which adults have deemed impenetrable. I’m well into post-puberty—and therefore confused much of the time—and all it took was me trying the disc on a different computer platform to crack this scheme. Imagine what could happen in the hands of little Scooter down the block.
The solution is to use a Mac. The CDs work fine on Macs, can be ripped in iTunes and copied to the iPod. Or just buy the songs from iTunes and do what you want with them.
MacWorld has a great rundown of all the facts (and some speculation) from yesterday’s announcement from the WWDC that Apple is leaving the PowerPC architecture for Intel by next year. A few things I gathered from Steve Jobs’ keynote:
Bruce Schneier has an interesting piece on the flawed logic used against using cell phones on airplanes. Apparently authorities are worried about terrorist use of cell phones to co-ordinate their activities or to trigger attacks. From his blog:
…security countermeasures that force the attackers to make a minor modification in their tactics aren’t very good trade-offs. Banning cell phones on airplanes only makes sense if the terrorists are planning to use cell phones on airplanes, and will give up and not bother with their attack because they can’t. If their plan doesn’t involve air-to-ground communications, or if it doesn’t involve air travel at all, then the security measure is a waste. And even worse, we denied ourselves all the good uses of the technology in the process.
There are probably reasons rooted in social impropriety that are more valid than the phantom terrorist threat. The original article Schneier is commenting on is here at news.com.au.
Welcome to Science Addiction! The purpose of the web site is to feed the obsessions of people like me: that is to say people who live for the minutiae of different aspects of science (mainly) and art. For the bloggers out there, the web site has been created using WordPress v1.50 (which I will write an extensive article about soon) w/ the Black Letterhead theme. Expect it to grow with time. The site is hosted by WestHost.
Science Addiction 