the art of writing is discovering what you believe
MakeZine.com: The Open Source Car: a Design Brief:
The time is right for a true people’s hybrid vehicle. The web is peppered with how-to sites for converting your old car into an electric vehicle, but why not develop SourceForge-style documentation for an open source hybrid?
I agree. I had thought it would take longer.
Other Campuses: Duke evaluates iPod experiment – The Daily Illini – News:
As the year-long “experiment” of providing 20-gigabyte Apple iPods to all freshmen winds to an end and the media frenzy slowly dies down, administrators have begun to evaluate the future of the project. Critics ask: Have students used them for educational purposes? Did teachers find innovative ways to integrate this technology into their curricula? Was it worth the $500,000?
gah, the article is spread across 6 pages and the print option requires you to go to their site: sorry about that.
Interesting overview, but I found it interesting that the professors were more into the technology than some of the students. The kid who planned to give his to his mom and the other who had never opened the supplied recording attachment, while claiming no one else used theirs, are both undeserving chowderheads.
When I was in college, back in the Stone Age, we had a prof who recorded his lectures on video, so they could be replayed through the day (he taught entry-level sections which were packed): by doing that, everyone got the same lecture and they could check it out at the media center if they wanted a refresher. Some of the Duke students and profs are taking the same approach: good for them, and I hope the other damp squibs don’t screw it up for them.
One of the reasons to experiment with a visual interface is to see what options are available: the menus and buttons sometimes reveal choices that the written docs don’t. I was playing with the MySQL Administrator client I learned about earlier today, and was baffled by the discovery that I have no query caching.
Come to find out, there is some query caching on, but MySQL Administrator can’t find it. CocoaMySQL, on the other hand, while not as full-featured on administrative/health issues, does return some data on query cache rates.
And the command-line mysql client confirms it.
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Qcache%';
+-------------------------+---------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------------+---------+
| Qcache_queries_in_cache | 851 |
| Qcache_inserts | 1668 |
| Qcache_hits | 14917 |
| Qcache_lowmem_prunes | 0 |
| Qcache_not_cached | 197 |
| Qcache_free_memory | 4230256 |
| Qcache_free_blocks | 1 |
| Qcache_total_blocks | 1725 |
+-------------------------+---------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
What would be useful would be some direct query access through the “official” client, as you get with CocoaMySql.
Bug report filed with MySQL AB.
And just as quickly closed. For whatever reason, once I exited the app and restarted it, it is picking up the values now.
Eric points out this successful graduate of the Social Engineering for Fun and Profit school:
From Craigs List personals:
You are an amazingly technical geek, who is going to teach me as much as possible about computer and network security – port analysis, protocol identification, remote application discovery, remote vulnerability assessment, windows registry assessment, OS discovery, identity management, etc.
I will be your fabulous girlfriend for the weekend. We can go wherever you want, we can do whatever you want.
At the end of the weekend, I will have a deeper understanding of IT security and you will have a s*#t-eating grin on your face.
Am I a tart? Yes, but you won’t have to put up with the nonsense that you usually have to go through.
Email me your credentials.
Such a deal.
It remains to be seen who gets the better of this deal: seems like a lot to go over in just one weekend . . .
Now playing: Twenty Years Ago by Magazine from the album “Scree Rarities 1978 – 1981” | Get it
Daring Fireball: Nerve Touching (
1):
If you take it personally that the Mac has perhaps slipped to Apple’s second-most-profitable division, you’re weird.
Not always right, but always entertaining and insightful, John Gruber pokes a cluestick at those who fret over . . . whatever it is they find fretworthy this week. For the moment, Apple dropping FireWire cables as standard equipment with the iPod as opposed to staying FireWire only seems to have many peoples’ knickers in a twist, ignoring the fact that introducing USB-equipped iPods accounts for the bulk of the product’s success.
To me, this calls to mind Dave Eggers’ well-known rant about “selling out” (79) or whatever insecure people call the prospect of losing a sense exclusivity for a band, a TV show, or a product.
Apple already has distinct product lines — the Powerbook and iBook, iMac and PowerMac, the Mini, the eMac, the XServe, — with it’s computing products, and a slew of iPods. It’s not much of a leap to see these as divisions with diverse audiences and goals.
Hand powered iPod Shuffle (14):
Okay, this is what my friends call a “Torronesque” project. This is where I usually come up with something and build it, and it really has no purpose or usefulness- but on further inspection it’s kinda neat. This is the iPod shuffle hand charger, actually recharger. There are many “crank powered” accessories floating around, so I thought I’d try a few and figure out if the iPod shuffle can be recharged with one. Well, it can, sorta. Here it is in action! (
Call it “found power” or something, but it’s interesting to think about stuff like this. Imagine a TV that only worked if you pedaled a generator?
MSFT’s alleged theft of IP from Eolas (forcing the W3C to re-think it’s own standards) is tossed out, but wait, now someone is trying to get the real origins of DOS cleared up.
Personally I think it’s great news that the spurious patent ruling in favour of Eolas has been overturned because of prior art. There are some morons who think that because the defendant is Microsoft we should be sad about this, and I admit there is a certain justice in seeing a software patent advocate hoist by their own petard.
But Eolas submarine use of a software patent to subvert the W3C standards process is something we all have to fight, teaming together across competitive and ideological barriers to address the issue. If Eolas wins, we are all the losers. It’s just a pity that there’s no low-cost fast-track to achieve the result – the main damage software patents cause is that defence against them can only be afforded by rich corporations.
Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS (3/2/2005):
A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history — the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance — has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public trial.
What a muddled tale that is.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Flagler:
FLAGLER BEACH — In this small, sleepy beachside town, one resident’s 25-minute documentary film — a scathing commentary on three city commissioners — is making waves.
DVDs bearing a tranquil view of the Flagler Beach Pier are floating through living rooms across the city, leaving viewers stunned, incensed, even outraged.
Called “Flagler Beach 3 to 2,” the short documentary film was created by 52-year-old Dan Bayerl using footage of commission meetings, newspaper articles and public records. It seeks to expose actions by the City Commission that Bayerl believes harm the town more than help it — from “secret committees” to rejecting the will of the people.
Now, they’re selling for $5 apiece at popular spots around town, The Pier Restaurant and Fisherman’s Net Restaurant and Seafood Market– not through Bayerl’s efforts, but through business owners eager to spread the word. The film debuted Feb. 21 to a packed Fisherman’s Net, attracting about 120 viewers.
My brother-in-law has taken a leaf from Michael Moore’s book (actually, he has been doing video stuff for years, but this is his first political foray, as far as I know) and made a documentary exposing the machinations of his local city commissioners.
Well done. I’m hoping he makes a torrent available (I’ll host it) to serve as a model for others who want to take citizen journalism to the next level.
Before I started keeping this scintillating weblog, I had an encounter with one of my neighbors over a tree, or more specifically the leaves of the tree. Seems he was miffed that the tree was dropping leaves on his property, and he came to my door one day and blustered on about how he had talked to the Authorities and was within his rights to Take Steps. I thought not more of it: his reputation preceded him, and I wasn’t all that interested in hearing his complaints, especially about something as ephemeral as birch leaves.
Imagine my surprise when I returned from taking my kids to school and found a ladder leaning across my fence and two freshly-painted (!?) stumps where there used to be large limbs. Now, realize this tree is 50-60 feet tall, and the limbs that were removed are at about 8-10 feet. Is it likely the offending leaves came from the now-removed branches? Or perhaps from the higher ones that actually cross into his airspace?
He got a sternly-worded certified letter making him aware that in this timber loving state, damaging a tree not your own carries a treble damages penalty.
Now I have another neighbor who wants to have some branches removed from our towering cedrus deodara that is threatening to turn her yard into a moss garden. She called me on the phone a week or so ago to let me know what she wanted to do and that she would pay for it, and tonight stopped by to drop off a written note, listing all the agreed-upon details for my approval.
Gee, they couldn’t be more different in their approaches, could they?
Now playing: Helter Skelter by The Beatles from the album “The Beatles [White Album] (Disc 2)” | Get it
