Author: paul

Usage Statistics for blue.paulbeard.org – September 2002

5 of the top 20 search queries I get are for CNN’s RSS feed (which of course is not provided by CNN): it’s the number 1 query with 4 more appearances in the 11 – 20 spots.

I wonder how many people are starting to browse their news this way and linking to it from an aggregator, rather than the home page of a site? And how will news organizations respond? Will they generate weak RSS files to discourage this (leading more third parties to roll their own) or will they find a way to leverage this new entry point? It’s akin to the argument over deep linking, though the site provides the links. One scenario is that pages read per user may go up as people scan the feed before going to the site: usage, defined as casual browsing, may decline, in favor of more focused reading. Never will good headlines and solid lead paragraphs (‘nut grafs’, as I recall them) be so important.

Suspected Computer-Virus Author Arrested

T0rn, with a zero, was not as menacing as the Code Red, Sircam and Nimda worms and viruses, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to corporate computer networks last year. Linux-based software systems account for a small segment of the computing market.

So does this mean that more people should use Linux since there are fewer viruses that exploit or are we lucky so few people do because the effects might have been worse?

According to this page, t0rn is a rootkit installed by the Lion or Ramen virues and exploits 8.2, 8.2-P1, 8.2.2-Px, and all 8.2.3 beta versions of BIND

oreilly.com — Online Catalog: Physics for Game Developers

Colliding billiard balls. Missile trajectories. Cornering dynamics in speeding cars. By applying the laws of physics, you can realistically model nearly everything in games that bounces around, flies, rolls, slides, or isn’t sitting still, to create compelling, believable content for computer games, simulations, and animation. Physics for Game Developers serves as the starting point for enriching games with physics-based realism.

Nu Shortcuts in School R 2 Much 4 Teachers

Melanie Weaver was stunned by some of the term papers she received from a 10th-grade class she recently taught as part of an internship. “They would be trying to make a point in a paper, they would put a smiley face in the end,” said Ms. Weaver, who teaches at Alvernia College in Reading, Pa. “If they were presenting an argument and they needed to present an opposite view, they would put a frown.”

O’Reilly Network: Switcher Stories Follow Up [Sep. 17, 2002]

BSD is for people who love Unix.
Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.

IP: Norway dumps Microsoft

I found this article on the Interesting People mailing list’s archives: required reading if you want to know what’s really being talked about/acted upon.

Often the lynchpin is a standardised file format policy — so you can buy whatever you want, so long as it is 100 per cent Microsoft file format compatible, which is all but impossible as Microsoft changes its formats so often and for no real purpose other than to lock in customers.

Isn’t file compatibility the chief gripe most people have with trying to work with MSFT applications? Between locking non-Windows licensees out and locking its own customers in, there’s a lot to put up with.

Here’s a note on Tim O’Reilly’s weblog to the same effect: Forcing Microsoft to open the office file formats would have done more to encourage competition than just about anyone else. It would be nice to see users’ data belong to them again, with the power to switch to other applications if they so choose.

Users owning their data? What a radical concept. He has a link to a story at the Register on Sun’s XML/open standards initiative.